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Sep 23, 2026
Moraes Recusal Puts Senate Visitor Logs at the Center of a Transparency Fight
Moraes’s recusal removes an immediate conflict from the case but not the broader dispute: transparency advocates say the records are needed for public oversight, while the Senate has resisted releasing them after an access-to-information request.
Justice Alexandre de Moraes has declared himself unable to hear a Supreme Federal Court case seeking Senate entry-and-exit records for eight people, including his wife, lawyer Viviane Barci de Moraes, and former banker Daniel Vorcaro. The case will be reassigned to another justice, and Moraes will not take part in its eventual ruling.1
The request was filed by Curitiba councilman Guilherme Kilter after the Senate denied his request under Brazil’s access-to-information law. Kilter argues that the records are necessary to scrutinize meetings at the Senate and to follow inquiries into possible irregularities.1 The Senate’s refusal, however, has put privacy and institutional control of visitor data on one side of the dispute, and public-accountability demands on the other.
Both accounts of the case agree that Moraes’s wife is directly named in the records request, making recusal the central procedural issue. Moraes invoked a provision of Brazil’s Civil Procedure Code barring a judge from acting when the judge, a spouse or certain relatives are parties to a case.2 Kilter said Moraes should not have been assigned the case in the first place: “He should not even have been in the draw. His wife is in this information request.”2
The reporting also places the visitor-records dispute alongside scrutiny of exchanges involving Moraes, Barci de Moraes and Vorcaro. One account says federal police material contains messages involving Vorcaro and the couple, while noting that the Supreme Court has not yet considered the police report.1 Another cites reported communications and business links involving Vorcaro, presenting them as context for the public interest in the case.2
Online, commentator Paulo Figueiredo went further, asserting that Moraes had been caught in “another lie” and that his position was untenable.
3 That criticism reflects a sharper political interpretation than the court’s procedural step itself: the recusal resolves who will hear this petition, not the underlying question of whether the Senate must disclose the logs.