I'm John Dachsh with my colleagues Joseph Goomar, Executive Director of Secure Free Society

and Ernesto Aruja, former Foreign Minister of the Republic of Brazil.

Dateline Brasilia, Reuters, former Brazilian President Bolsonaro's future in office, hangs

in the balance on, as the country's federal electoral court begins a trial that could

leave him in the political wilderness for nearly a decade.

Ernesto, I get lost in this.

They're accusing the former president of talking to foreign diplomats.

Is that the accusation?

Is that a violation of any law written down in Brazil?

Please help me understand this.

Yes, Donna, it's hard to understand because actually in Brazil there is no law anymore.

There is the will of the political system where the judicial range plays a dominant part

and among them the electoral court, a very dominant part.

The electoral court in Brazil is kind of a snapshot of the Supreme Court.

It's made composed by a few judges of the Supreme Court and other judges, but the Supreme

Court judges ran the show there.

They ran the show in the country.

Basically they can do anything.

They proved that during the campaign last year where they allowed commercials for advertisement

for Bolsonaro to be taken off the air because of any sort of pretext while the same sort

of advertisement was allowed for Lula in thousands of other partial interventions of the Supreme

Court.

...