Other criminals without a warrant (and without a rifle) can expect the same fate as Jefferson.

By Moisés Mendes, for 247

Roberto Jefferson has an incurable flaw for figures who challenge, discredit, and attack institutions and authorities. Jefferson does not hold office.

Without a mandate and without immunity, things get complicated. The grenade man has been a failed extremist. He even failed in his attempt to elect his daughter, Cristiane Brasil, as a federal deputy.

He has no reliable shields in Brasília and knows he will be abandoned to the solitude of Father Kelmon's company and prayers if Lula is elected.

Bolsonaro has already warned that he will treat him as someone who wasn't even a former ally. And that he might appear speaking well of Zé Trovão, because Zé Trovão was elected federal deputy.

But he won't talk about Jefferson anymore. If he continued smoking, Jefferson wouldn't even receive a pack of cigarettes from Bolsonaro in prison.

Shortly after the attack, Bolsonaro opportunely announced in a live broadcast that he doesn't have any photos with Jefferson. But he does. He said Jefferson had no involvement in his campaign. But he did.

Father Kelmon, who tried to destabilize Lula during the debate on Globo, is a puppet and subordinate of Jefferson and worked for Bolsonaro to provoke Lula. There is footage of this interaction. But Bolsonaro is not afraid of Jefferson's resentment.

If Bolsonaro is defeated on Sunday, Jefferson will no longer even be an Allan dos Santos, who has family protection in the United States. Much less a Daniel Silveira. His situation is worse than that of Fabrício Queiroz.

Queiroz didn't throw grenades at federal police officers and is keeping quiet, after also failing in his attempt to obtain a seat in the Chamber of Deputies.

On the scale of Bolsonaro's lowlife behavior, Jefferson has long been on the level of a Sara Winter. Sara jumped ship and changed her life after being arrested and realizing she would be abandoned by her family.

Now, it's time to think about others. And those who don't resort to rifles and grenades, more out of cowardice than a lack of such an arsenal at home, can prepare themselves.

Depending on the damage the attack causes to the campaign, if Bolsonaro's support is weakened based on what the polls show in the coming days, other aggressors against institutions and democracy should start scheduling surrenders.

So far, the Supreme Court's actions, through attacks on the Court and specific ministers, have only targeted supporting actors of fascism. There are no first-rate targets among those targeted by the Supreme Court.

But it will be necessary to catch important people, those with prominent roles. Moraes is in charge of the investigation in the Supreme Court that most worries Bolsonaro, the one about digital militias.

Two of Bolsonaro's sons, Flavio and Eduardo, hold office and have immunity. But councilman Carluxo is unprotected. Just like the businessmen who finance the militias, to whom the family owes invaluable favors, also lack protection.

The Supreme Court knows that those who operate, disseminate, and finance fake news will not go unpunished.

If they stay, the Supreme Court will have failed in its most important offensive against the structure set up within the government to lie, defame, attack the Supreme Court, and conspire against democracy.

The requests for indictments from the Covid Parliamentary Inquiry Commission, which are languishing in the drawers of the Public Prosecutor's Office regarding the vaccine mafias during the pandemic, may come to nothing.

It involves people without parliamentary immunity. There are more than 60 people named in the CPI report, all with direct links to civilian and military Bolsonaro supporters.

Even the investigations against the eight millionaire uncles who used WhatsApp to preach the coup may fail. But the inquiry into the militias cannot disappoint those who expect effective answers from the Justice system.

And then, at some point, not through preventative action, but through trials and convictions, we will have others similar to Roberto Jefferson being invited to turn themselves in.

The response to four years of terror, involving people more powerful than Jefferson, lies in the reparations that the militia investigation will provide.

Any other compromise solution, which could exempt digital militias and their financiers from punishment, would be a tragedy for democracy and for the Supreme Court.

Support the initiative of Journalists for Democracy on Catarse