Mobile phones used by Jair Bolsonaro were accessed by a group of hackers who also targeted a senior judge and prosecutors leading a sweeping anti-corruption investigation, Brazil’s far-right president said on Thursday.

“I was informed by the Federal Police and the Justice Ministry that my cell phones were invaded by the gang arrested on Tuesday, 23. A serious attempt against Brazil and its institutions. May they be harshly punished! Brazil is no longer land without law,” he tweeted.

The news comes after a political storm was unleashed by a series of articles based on leaked conversations – mostly on the messaging app Telegram – between the justice minister, Sérgio Moro, and other officials.

The reports were published by the investigative website the Intercept and Brazilian outlets. They showed that, while still a judge, Moro had advised prosecutors in the corruption prosecution of the former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

That sentence removed Lula from the election, after which Bolsonaro named Moro as justice minister.

Four people were arrested on Wednesday for allegedly hacking Moro’s phone and others.

On Thursday, Folha de S Paulo reported that one of them – Walter Delgatti Neto – told federal police that he had anonymously sent the compromising chats from the hacked phones to the Intercept’s founder, Glenn Greenwald, but had not demanded payment.

Federal police declined to comment.

Greenwald said this confirmed “everything we’ve said from the beginning about how we obtained this material: simply passively receiving the already-obtained information and then reported on it”.

Neto faces separate court charges of embezzlement, robbery, drug trafficking and use of a false document, Folha reported.

Brazilian media has reported that Bolsonaro insists on using a common cellphone instead of the encrypted phone given to him by intelligence services because it does not work with the social media services, such as Twitter and WhatsApp, that he uses so avidly.

On Thursday, Bolsonaro sought to reassure Brazilians that he never dealt with national security, diplomacy or other sensitive issues on his mobile.

“I always took care with strategic information,” he told reporters. “They wasted time with me.”