‘Fake news’ or police ‘losing their minds’? Glenn Greenwald slams report he’s investigated in Brazil

Award-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald has said that a report of him being investigated by Brazilian police is either fake news or retaliation from the authorities after he ran bombshell stories about the nation’s top brass.

On Tuesday, Brazilian media outlet O Antagonista claimed that police requested the state-run money laundering watchdog, the COAF, to investigate Greenwald’s “financial activities.” The probe is reportedly tasked with finding whether the US-born journalist, who now lives and works in Brazil, is somehow related in the hacking of the cell phones of high-ranking officials.

The news came amid a growing political scandal, triggered by the stories published by the Intercept, an investigative website Greenwald co-founded. In June, the website shared private messages appearing to show how a judge, who is now a justice minister, was consulting a prosecutor during a high-profile anti-corruption probe. The revelations dominated headlines in Brazil and sparked heated debates in the nation’s parliament.

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Police and government officials refused to comment on whether Greenwald is under investigation. The journalist, who is a vocal critic of Brazil’s right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro, slammed the authorities, saying that they may be looking for a way to punish him for his work. “Either the Federal Police have lost their minds, or someone is using the naive O Antagonista to plant Fake News trying to intimidate us,” he said on Wednesday.

Greenwald earlier accused Bolsonaro of using police “to investigate me in retaliation for my reporting.”

The reports of police targeting Greenwald caused an outrage among local lawyers, human rights campaigners, and opposition politicians. The lawmakers demanded the government give a definitive answer to whether Greenwald is under investigation.

The irony is obvious: the Bolsonaro movement spent years claiming the Workers' Party was a tyranny that attacked a free press. It never did. But this is what Bolsonaro & Moro are now doing: using the Federal Police they control to investigate me in retaliation for my reporting.

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 2, 2019

“The [justice] minister needs to answer the questions asked. We asked several times if police or the COAF are investigating the journalist, and the minister does not respond,”said lawmaker Zeca Dirceu.

Glenn Greenwald won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on NSA mass surveillance, revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden.