Brazil Judge Rejects Hacking Accusations 'For Now' Against Journalist Greenwald

A Brazilian judge said Thursday that he will reject cybercrime charges "for now" against US journalist Glenn Greenwald, whose investigative website published leaked messages that embarrassed top officials and threatened to undermine a massive corruption probe.

Federal Judge Ricardo Leite wrote that Greenwald, co-founder of The Intercept news website, was protected by a Supreme Court justice's ruling last year granting him the right to keep his sources secret.

Prosecutors said that Greenwald allegedly "helped, motivated and guided" a group of hackers as they accessed the cell phone chats of Justice Minister Sergio Moro and prosecutors involved in the so-called Car Wash probe.

Leite said that he preferred to wait for a "new understanding" of the case from the Supreme Court before moving on any charges against the journalist, and resolved to dismiss "for now, the complaint against Glenn Greenwald, given the controversy over the scope" of the Supreme Court justice's ruling.

However Leite accepted the charges against six others who were accused alongside Greenwald.

Walter Delgatti Neto, one of the hackers, admitted sharing thousands of encrypted messages between Moro, a former judge, and Car Wash investigators.

The chats showed Moro conspired to keep leftist icon Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva out of the 2018 presidential election that President Jair Bolsonaro ultimately won. They also snared scores of high profile members of Brazil's business and political elite.

Moro, who was a judge before joining Bolsonaro's cabinet, has denied any wrongdoing and refused to resign over the scandal.

He said criminal hackers had aimed to overturn convictions resulting from the probe that has claimed the scalps of scores of high-profile figures, including Lula, since it began in 2014.

Bolsonaro has previously branded Greenwald a "militant" and suggested he could do jail time.

Greenwald, who lives in Rio de Janeiro with his Brazilian husband and two adopted children, was part of the team that first interviewed fugitive US whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013.

He told AFP in June 2019 that he had received "grotesque" threats, which also targeted his family, since his team began publishing the chats.