The former president of Brazil’s far right, facing charges of coup that, asked for “international support” to rescue his country than he claims to be a movement towards a left-wing dictatorship to Venezuelan style.
The retired army captain, which the attorney general of the Republic accuses that after losing reelection in 2022, said to what “American aid is very welcome” and expressed his thanks to the president for closing USAID, which in the most populous democracy in Latin America.
The Brazilian Supreme Court decides this week to put Bolsonaro on trial. He is accused of a plot involving high -ranking military personnel who allegedly included plans to murder President Luiz Inacio da Silva, who won the election. The progress of the criminal action begins within a few weeks and leads to a verdict before the end of the year.
“We have a dictatorship problem, a royal dictatorship,” Bolsonaro said in an interview at his liberal party office in Brasilia. “Brazil cannot get out of this situation alone. It needs international support.”
The former 70-year-old, who is still the most prominent conservative leader in Brazil, refused to say what he wanted Trump to do. But his son Eduardo said in an interview with FT last month that the Federal Supreme Court, a rapporteur of the coup plot investigation rapporteur, met the conditions for US sanctions, originally made to punish Russians human rights violators.
The former president especially criticized Moraes, claiming that the minister “was in a hurry to consider me guilty.” “He already has the sentence for me, 28 years in prison.” But he added, “I don’t think they want me in prison, they want me dead. That’s what is at stake in Brazil.”
Hundreds of people were sentenced and some received long prison sentences for involvement in the acts of January 8, 2023, when thousands of Bolsonaro supporters turned government buildings in Brasilia, claiming that the presidential election had been fraudulent.
The Freedom House organization has not registered changes in the level of democratic freedoms in Brazil since Lula took office in 2023.
With his father’s legal problems worsening, Eduardo spent much of this year in Washington lobbying with US Congress members and Trump administration about what Bolsonaros calls threats to freedom of expression in Brazil, including court orders against X and one, a video sharing platform hosting Trump’s Truth Social Network.
Moraes, who has long been a hated figure on the Brazilian right, is part of the class of five ministers who will decide if the Supreme will put Bolsonaro on trial on the coup conspiracy allegations.
The Attorney’s Office says that the 2023 riot was the last act of a coup plot and formally accused Bolsonaro and 33 others last month in a 272 -page complaint. One of the accusations was that the conspirators planned to kill poisoned Lula and shot Moraes.
Bolsonaro denied the accusations, calling them “ridiculous”. His supporters describe participants of the acts of 8 January as political prisoners and are asking for amnesty, that the directo’s opponents argue that they could benefit the former president.
Bolsonaro was forbidden to run for elections by 2030 because of statements that made ambassadors at a televised meeting in 2022 that Brazil’s electronic ballot boxes were vulnerable to hackers and fraud.
“I’m not in the ballot box is a denial of democracy,” Bolsonaro said. “It’s the end of democracy.”
He compared his situation to the opposition in Venezuela, whose main leader was banned by socialist Nicolás Maduro from competing in last year’s elections.
“The only flag Lula has is the false flag of defending democracy,” he said. “He is the same person who extended the red carpet to Maduro” in Brasilia in 2023.
With Bolsonaro facing the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison, Eduardo and his allies are circulating a dossier among Trump Administration officials and Republican legislators to mobilize them against the Brazilian Supreme Court of Brazil, said a person with knowledge of the campaign.
The 1,000-page dossier seeks to highlight actions that Moraes allegedly took against US citizens, such as Elon Musk and former Aides of Trump Steve Bannon and Jason Miller, as well as US-based Brazilians. Eduardo announced last week a license of his duties in Congress and said could request political asylum in the US.
The purpose of the lobby is to show that Brazil’s highest court violated the guarantees of freedom of expression of the first amendment by aiming at American territory, thus justifying sanctions such as visa prohibitions and active freezing.
Moraes was placed at the center of the Washington campaign. The minister blocked X in Brazil in 2024 in the absence of appointing a legal representative of the platform in the country, until Musk, owner of the platform, retreated.
Bolsonaro also said that Moraes unbalanced the game against him in his performance as president of Brazil’s main electoral court in the 2022 election campaign, banning some of his campaign announcements and issuing orders against supporters. “There was interference with the Superior Electoral Court in favor of Lula,” he said.
Moraes justified his actions against X and other sites saying that democracy is at least risk than social media platforms are regulated. The Supreme Court rejected Bolsonaro’s attorneys’ attempt to remove the minister from the coup plot case on allegations of lack of impartiality.
There are signs that the Trump administration of the Bolsonaro family. The state department said last month that “blocking access to information” or imposing fines on US companies is “incompatible with freedom of expression,” adding that “respect for sovereignty is a two -way road with all US partners, including Brazil.”
The post led the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Brazil to accuse the State Department of “distorting the meaning” of the decisions of the Brazilian Supreme Court.
