As the country slept Friday morning, far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro fired the Federal Police Director Maurício Valeixo, bringing to a head a long-simmering battle with Justice Minister Sergio Moro. Moro, in turn, promptly resigned — in a new, major episode of deepening chaos in Brazilian politics. The official notice firing the Federal Police head bears Moro’s digital signature, but in a press conference Friday morning, the outgoing justice minister claimed that he was not informed of the move and did not sign the document. This and other revelations made by Moro could serve as grounds for impeachment, if the Brazilian body politic can muster the political will to support such a drastic measure. Members of Congress are already gathering signatures for a congressional inquiry into Moro’s allegations.

“I understood that I could not set aside my commitment to the rule of law.”

In his press conference, Moro suggested that Bolsonaro removed Valeixo because the president opposed investigations being conducted by the Federal Police. “He was concerned about investigations underway in the Federal Supreme Court and that a change would also be opportune at the Federal Police,” Moro said of Bolsonaro’s thinking. Moro said Bolsonaro’s concerns were not a reasonable justification for firing Valeixo, but added that he nonetheless searched for “an alternative solution, to avoid a political crisis during a pandemic.” In the end, Moro said, “I understood that I could not set aside my commitment to the rule of law.” Notably, the Federal Police are conducting several investigations that could impact Bolsonaro, his politician sons, and several members of their inner circle. Moro loomed large over Brazilian politics during the past several years, even before he accepted Bolsonaro’s offer to serve as justice minister. He was the judge at the center of the influential Operation Car Wash anti-corruption investigation that put former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in prison, removing the popular politician from the 2018 presidential election and clearing the way for Bolsonaro’s victory. When he entered government, Moro was among the most popular political figures in the country and was seen as an important ally for Bolsonaro, but also as a potential rival in the 2022 elections. The ex-judge’s standing, however, was seriously weakened after The Intercept began publishing an explosive series, in English and Portuguese, on malfeasance and potential illegal actions by Moro and Car Wash prosecutors. As a result of the series, Lula was eventually released from prison.

Though the fate of Valeixo had been a source of long-simmering tension between Moro and Bolsonaro, the clash heated up in recent days. Last August, Bolsonaro threatened to oust Valeixo, whom Moro had handpicked for the post, but eventually relented after Moro had threatened to resign, provoking an institutional crisis. In recent days, Bolsonaro made clear to aides that he was looking to fire Valeixo, and Moro restated his threat to resign. By Thursday evening, it appeared that Bolsonaro had again backed off, but then the notoriously capricious president made the move, prompting Moro to quit. Investigations Into Bolsonaro and Sons The Federal Police and Supreme Court are conducting multiple investigations that threaten Bolsonaro and his politician sons directly, as well as key allies in their orbit. A Federal Police investigation into fake news attacks directed at the Supreme Court recently began looking into the so-called Office of Hate, a pro-Bolsonaro online messaging operation run by the president’s son, Rio City Council Member Carlos Bolsonaro. The Public Prosecutor’s Office requested on Monday that the Supreme Court investigate whether a rally in Brasília last Sunday violated national security laws. The demonstration was held in opposition to quarantine measures and called for a military coup and the forced shutdown of Congress. Bolsonaro spoke at the rally, and some of his allies in Congress reportedly helped organize it.

Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, the president’s son, is also under investigation for an alleged money-laundering scheme and has repeatedly appealed to the Supreme Court to halt the investigation on technicalities. The case connects him directly to a gangster who was a key suspect in the assassination of Rio City Council Member Marielle Franco. (The gangster was killed in a police raid on his hideout in February, after months on the run.) Last August, Bolsonaro removed the financial oversight agency that first identified the suspicious transactions from Moro’s portfolio. And the list of police and judicial probes into the Bolsonaros and their allies doesn’t end there. The various investigations have led to calls for more dramatic actions against the government. Vladimir Aras, an influential member of the Public Prosecutor’s Office — who worked closely with Car Wash investigators for years and was briefly a member of the task force — tweeted, “The facts narrated by [Moro] are very serious. There were reports of forgery, obstruction of justice and crimes of responsibility” — referring to the standard for impeachable offenses, the equivalent of “high crimes and misdemeanors” in the U.S. Aras added that the allegations must be investigated by the Public Prosecutor and Congress. Fernando Haddad, the presidential candidate from Lula’s Workers’ Party who lost to Bolsonaro in 2018, echoed these concerns, but called on government ministers to quit and force Bolsonaro to resign, rather than drag the country through a drawn-out impeachment process. And former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso also called for Bolsonaro’s resignation. Political Crisis During a Pandemic Last Thursday, Bolsonaro fired Health Minister Henrique Mandetta, who had publicly opposed the president’s overt denialism of the risks of the coronavirus crisis, which undermined Brazil’s early response strategy. The health system in multiple Brazilian states are currently in collapse, with long lines for intensive care beds in hospitals and mass graves being dug for the victims. The new health minister focused his messaging on the path to reopening the economy and easing quarantine regulations, which are already being relaxed in multiple states and had nonetheless been poorly enforced nationwide.