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Unelected interim President Michel Temer met with Brazilian Supreme Court justice Gilmar Mendes, who is also the president of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, in the vice-presidential palace on Saturday evening, local media reported.
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Temer’s assistant stated that the meeting held at Gilmar’s request to discuss the Supreme Electoral Tribunal’s budget, the Brazilian daily Folha de Sao Paulo reported.
According to Folha, Gilmar is the special rapporteur in the Supreme Electoral Tribunal charged with analyzing the campaign accounts from the last election of Rousseff and her running mate Temer, who was her vice president before being installed in the country’s top office by the senate after the parliamentary coup.
Gilmar is also set to soon assume a position that will involve ruling on cases linked to Operation Car Wash, the investigations focused on politicians and other officials implicated in corruption and bribery schemed in the state oil company Petrobras.
The meeting comes just days after evidence emerged revealing that suspended President Dilma Rousseff’s political rivals schemed with the Supreme Court to ensure her ouster.
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The wiretaps also proved that a key motivation behind the impeachment bid was to halt corruption investigations targeting a number of high-level opposition politicians including the head of Temer’s PMDB party, interim Planning Minister Romero Juca, as well as Senate chief Renan Calheiros.
In the leaked recordings, both expressed their desire to put a stop to the investigations by removing Rousseff and changing laws surrounding Operation Car Wash.
Rousseff was suspended from office for 180 days on May 12 through a Senate vote to make her stand trial over allegations of budget manipulations. Interim President Michel Temer will be installed in Brazil’s highest office until 2018 if the impeachment is ultimately approved.
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