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Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva met today in New York City with Mayor Zohran Mamdani on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly — greeting the young socialist with an almost fatherly message, urging him to become "a great soldier in the struggle" to end poverty and the "invisibility" of the world's poor.

What Lula didn't mention: he is a convicted criminal who should never have been allowed back into power in the first place.

In 2017, federal judge Sergio Moro sentenced Lula to nine and a half years in prison for passive corruption and money laundering — charges that grew from Operation Car Wash, the largest corruption investigation in Brazilian history. His sentence was later increased to over twelve years on appeal. Lula had taken bribes in the form of a luxury beachfront apartment from a construction giant seeking government contracts. He went to prison in April 2018.

He did not stay there.

Brazil's Supreme Court annulled his convictions in 2021, ruling 3-2 that the Curitiba court lacked jurisdiction. Critics noted that the justices who freed him were appointed by his own Workers' Party allies. Moro, the judge who convicted him, called the ruling politically motivated.

With his record wiped clean, Lula ran again in 2022 — and the Brazilian court system made sure the playing field was anything but level.

The Superior Electoral Court (TSE) spent the months before the election aggressively censoring content it deemed "disinformation" — a category that, in practice, meant pro-Bolsonaro material. Social media posts questioning the integrity of Brazil's electronic voting system were pulled down. Broadcasters were fined. The court issued sweeping orders to platforms to delete content, including videos and ads from Bolsonaro's own campaign. No equivalent action was taken against Lula's supporters.

Bolsonaro lost to Lula by less than two percentage points — the closest Brazilian presidential race in decades.

Then the courts went further. In June 2023, the TSE banned Bolsonaro from running for office until 2030 — eight years — for daring to question the reliability of the electronic voting system at a meeting with foreign ambassadors. The message was explicit: challenge the result and you will be destroyed.

CDM has covered the slow-motion collapse of Brazilian democracy — a pattern that should be familiar to any American watching what has been done to political opposition in this country. A two-tiered justice system that protects its allies and prosecutes its enemies. Courts weaponized not to deliver justice but to control outcomes. The criminalization of dissent dressed up as rule of law.

Lula has mastered this playbook. He was jailed, freed by friendly judges, handed a clean record by a sympathetic court, and handed the presidency with the help of a censorship apparatus. Now he stands in New York, dispensing wisdom to a young American socialist about fighting for the poor.

The people of Brazil who voted for Bolsonaro are still waiting for justice.

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