It was the first week of November 2022 when he decided to break military protocols and sent a letter to the then Army commander, .
The text was sent via WhatsApp to the head of the Force and passed on to several generals who were part of the government at the end of ().
Three of them reported to the Sheet who received ten paragraphs from Mário himself in which the military man pressed for a coup d’état to prevent the inauguration of () and keep Bolsonaro in power.
Mário and Bolsonaro are part of the list of 37 people indicted on suspicion of being involved in the coup plot. The final report of the investigations was sent to the (Attorney General’s Office), which is now responsible for deciding whether to close the case, request further investigations or report the suspects to court.
Mário wrote the letter on the eve of publishing it. Bolsonarism was inflamed because someone claimed, with false information, to have found fraud at the polls.
“COMMANDER, I would like, initially, to reinforce to you that I maintain my hopes in the Defense Report, an instrument that, at least, should keep burning the flame that currently stimulates the outcry of our Society”, says Mário at the beginning of the letter.
The retired general says that “our people” did not agree with the “legal maneuver that annulled Mr LULA’s conviction” and that they elected him “through a vulnerable, non-transparent and totally fraudulent Electronic System”.
He expressed concern about the emptying of coup camps in front of the Army barracks.
“COMMANDER, our parents lived through moments as dark as the one we are experiencing today, and as in the past, our Institutions must understand that the popular will is the basis of Democracy and that such a significant social appeal cannot simply be taxed as an Act Undemocratic, being disregarded and censored.”
Mario goes on to say that they are State actions and could only intervene with “social appeal and legal support that justifies such an act”. He also says that it would be necessary to have a “Trigger Event, as in the past”.
“An institutional rupture has already occurred between the Powers a long time ago. We need to take control of the situation, COMMANDER! The popular support is there and if we continue in our current passivity, we run the risk of losing both the support and the historic trust of our Society! “
The general states that in the Bolsonaro government there were several generals and so-called patriots dedicated to Brazil’s dignified future. In Lula’s administration, which would begin in January 2023, these people would not sit at the table to make decisions.
“It’s now or never again, COMMANDER, we have to act! And there is no greater motivation than the protection and future of this Great Nation and its children… Our children!”, writes Mário at the end of the letter.
Freire Gomes had a friendly relationship with Mário. The first headed the Special Operations Command while the second worked at the same base as the so-called “black kids”, the special operations unit in Goiânia.
The commander, however, was angered by the letter. He told interlocutors that he was even thinking about arresting Mário, and confirmed by the Sheet. Freire Gomes ended up backing down from punishing the soldier because he considered Bolsonaro’s reaction to be unexpected.
The Ministry of Defense handed over to the (Superior Electoral Court) on November 9, 2022 the . The document, however, began to circulate hours earlier among members of the Army High Command.
General Valério Stumpf, then Chief of the Army General Staff, was one of those who received the report. He closely followed the work of monitoring the polls, as members of the Force participated in the effort.
It was his idea to open space in a meeting of the Army High Command, in the second half of 2022, for the inspection of the ballot boxes for four-star generals. Nogueira was the one who commanded the Defense group.
According to reports made to SheetGeneral Stumpf committed to authorities in Brasília that the Defense report would be technical, that is, it would not create suspicions if he did not find them.
The military involved in the inspection, in fact, did not even find signs of fraud. They, however, clung to the details of the electoral process to say that.
Stumpf, upon receiving the document, went to talk to Colonel Marcelo Nogueira. He advised the soldier not to sign the report because he was failing to fulfill his promise not to raise suspicion where there was none.
Nogueira decided to sign the report together with the then Minister of Defense, General Paulo Sérgio. He argued to the Chief of Staff that the document was technical and did not allege fraud.
Marcelo Nogueira de Sousa was not promoted to general. He has been in reserve since September 2023.
The PF says at the conclusion of the investigation into the coup plot that the report from the Ministry of Defense, associated with the note released by the department in which it did not attest to the regularity of the electoral process, was the way found by the government to allow the “continuity of the acts planned by the organization criminal.”
“The prevalence of the understanding that the Ministry of Defense did not find any fraud or vulnerability in the electronic voting system would deconstruct the narrative of electoral fraud, demobilizing the demonstrations and, consequently, dispelling the false ‘just cause’ for the execution of the Coup de State and Abolition of the Democratic Rule of Law”, he says.
