As most readers of The Intercept know, on June 9, we began publishing a series of exposés about corruption at the highest levels of the Bolsonaro government in Brazil. In reporting on the fallout from our reporting — including the attempts by the government to initiate a retaliatory investigation of me — The Guardian explained that our reports “have had an explosive impact on Brazilian politics and dominated headlines,” adding that the revelations “appeared to show prosecutors in the sweeping Operation Car Wash corruption inquiry colluding with Sérgio Moro, the judge who became a hero in Brazil for jailing powerful businessmen, middlemen and politicians.”

Last month, The Intercept’s editor-in-chief, Betsy Reed, traveled to Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo in Brazil to work with our newsroom on our next set of stories, speak to the Brazilian press about the rationale behind our reporting, and meet with our lawyers and advisers about the still-escalating Bolsonaro-era risks and threats provoked by these revelations.

I sat down with Reed during her trip to speak about the importance of this journalism, the massive changes it has produced in Brazilian politics, and how these exposés are a fulfillment of The Intercept’s core editorial mission. Since her trip — as is often the case for Brazil — many new critical developments have taken place in a short time, including the freeing of former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the physical assault on me by a pro-Bolsonaro loyalist-pundit while we were on live TV.