"The Attorney General of the Republic was overruled by the Court of Appeal regarding that paragraph in relation to António Costa. Will she not take the initiative to make her position available, or to resign?", he questioned, in his usual commentary space on SIC Notícias.

Marques Mendes accused the "overruling regarding a paragraph of a statement that should never have existed, which is more political than legal and which is a true abuse of power".

For the former social democratic leader, "a crisis of confidence in the MP" has been installed. "When the MP, in any other investigation in the future, carries out a search, or an arrest, or promotes an accusation, a large part of the Portuguese will begin to distrust", he warned, regretting that "it is very bad".

In the same vein, Marques Mendes also questioned the Government and the President of the Republic, about whether "they will not have any public word of concern" and if they will remain "silent" and quiet".

He also addressed a question to the former Prime Minister António Costa and to Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, "who about six years ago decided not to reappoint the previous Attorney General Joana Marques Vidal and to appoint this Attorney General [Lucília Gago], who in the eyes of everyone is seen to be a person without any leadership skills".

"I am not saying that in the time of Joana Marques Vidal everything was fine and perfect in the MP, but it was much better than it is today. So one asks, why this huge mistake of not reappointing her?", he questioned.

It should be recalled that Operation Influencer led to the arrest of Vítor Escária, António Costa's chief of staff, as well as the lawyer, consultant and friend of the former prime minister Diogo Lacerda Machado, the directors of the company Start Campus Afonso Salema and Rui Oliveira Neves, and also the mayor of Sines, Nuno Mascarenhas, whom the judge released after judicial interrogation.

In addition to these, there are four other defendants in the process, including the former Minister of Infrastructure João Galamba, the president of the Portuguese Environment Agency, Nuno Lacasta, the lawyer, former Secretary of State for Justice and former spokesman for the Socialist Party (PS) João Tiago Silveira and the company Start Campus.

The process is related to the production of energy from hydrogen in Sines, Setúbal, and to the project to build a data center in the Sines industrial and logistics zone by Start Campus. António Costa appeared associated with this case and was the target of the opening of an investigation in the Public Prosecutor's Office with the STJ, a situation that led him to resign and to hold early elections, on March 10.

Even so, in February, the judge of Operation Influencer considered contradictory and vague the Public Prosecutor's Office's thesis that the defendants Diogo Lacerda Machado and Vitor Escária tried to pressure António Costa to approve a decree-law favorable to the Start Campus company, an argument constant in the response of the magistrate Nuno Dias Costa to the appeal of the Public Prosecutor's Office contesting the coercive measures, none of which involved deprivation of liberty.

Leia Também: Influencer? Luís Montenegro recusa comentar "processo que está a correr" (Portuguese version)

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