By 6 PM last night, the plenaries of Brazil’s house and senate were empty. A long-promised political holocaust had arrived. Supreme Court Justice Edson Fachin had just authorized corruption investigations into nearly a third of interim president Temer’s cabinet, and a similar proportion of senators. The list to be investigated totals 108 leading politicians.

For a sense of scale, note that this only includes those who benefit from privileged jurisdiction, and so can only be investigated by the Supreme Court. President Temer himself is also cited but wields temporary immunity. Brazil’s three former presidents are also included, as are nine sitting state governors, who will be investigated by lower courts. This is the latest act in the titanic anticorruption investigation known as Lava Jato (“Car Wash”) threatening to explode Brazil’s political establishment. More revelations are still to come.

The Lava Jato operation began when Sergio Moro, a little-known judge in a southern state capital, began to uncover bribery, kickbacks, illicit funding of parties, and plunder of public assets at an immense scale, all centered on the oil giant Petrobras and its contractors, mainly in the construction industry. The sums alleged to have been plundered total in the tens of bllions of dollars.