The ex-federal judge Sergio Moro was invited by Law Professor Curtis A. Bradley and spoke about the fight against corruption in Brazil at the University of Chicago on October 13. What a mockery of academic and democratic values and of the educational mission of a law school!

Sergio Moro’s criminal conduct as a partial, incompetent, arbitrary and politically motivated judge has been proved by the public disclosure of hundreds of private emails and messages between him and the prosecutors and investigators of the case against former President Lula da Silva and against members of the Workers’ Party (PT) in Brazil.

The leaks show former judge Moro instructing and directing investigators and prosecutors in order to incriminate and condemn the accused by any means, including lies, blackmail against witnesses, incarceration of those who did not provide the “facts” that Mr. Moro wanted to add to “his case” against President Lula da Silva, and against everybody else that Mr. Moro considered his ideological and political enemies. If this happened, for instance, in the U.S., Mr. Moro would be prosecuted and incarcerated immediately.

The illegal and immoral actions of Mr. Moro, after the coup d’état that ousted President Dilma Rousseff under false accusations of misconduct, provided the conditions that resulted in the election of the neofascist Jair Bolsonaro, a mediocre extreme rightwing politician that has proved to be an incompetent president on all counts, with his criminal, shameful and destructive conduct, a complete disgrace for the country and the Brazilian people.

Mr. Moro became Minister of Justice of the Bolsonaro government as a reward for the incarceration of President Lula da Silva under a mockery of legal process. Mr. Moro was sacked after it became clear to the neo-fascist Brazilian president, given the former judge’s appetite for personal power, that he could not trust the loyalty of his appointed Minister of Justice.

With all the facts that have been universally disclosed, thanks to the bravery of a hacker and the initiative of truly independent journalists in Brazil, there are those who still pretend they do not know the facts about the character and conduct of Mr. Moro. They present a sorry spectacle that mix together, in different and equally repulsive combinations, wishful ignorance, stupidity, the public assertion of personal lack of basic intelligence and basic integrity, fake “neutrality” as if the facts can be disputed, and /or, to sum up, pure bad faith.