A Supreme Court judge has ordered Brazil's Congress to start impeachment proceedings against Vice President Michel Temer, deepening a political crisis and uncertainty over leadership of Latin America's largest country.
Justice Marco Aurelio Mello on Tuesday told the lower house to convene an impeachment committee to consider putting Temer on trial on charges he helped manipulate budget accounting as part of President Dilma Rousseff's administration.
Another committee is already analysing similar charges against Rousseff, a leftist who is scrambling for support to defeat an impeachment vote in the lower house as early as mid-April.
Rousseff has repeatedly denied that she doctored Brazil's budget to hide a massive deficit before her 2014 re-election and has gained ground politically by repeating in almost every speech that what she says is her groundless impeachment is the equivalent of staging a coup d'etat against a democratic government.
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