Jair Messias Bolsonaro, defendant in interrogation in the Supreme, in 2025:
“For our part I’ve always been with the Constitution (…) So, I’m sorry, respectfully, your excellence, we stimulate nothing abnormal.”
Jair Messias Bolsonaro, then President of the Republic, before the Army Headquarters, in 2019:
“The time of the rascal is over. Now it’s the people in power, we don’t want to negotiate anything.”
Minister Alexandre de Moraes concluded within the expected period, and without incidents, the interrogation of former President Bolsonaro and the other seven defendants of the coup plot.
The former president chose to improvise, without using the right to remain silent. He tried to minimize the facts with the language of the barracks.
Moraes read Bolsonaro’s statements:
“Losing an election has no problem, we can’t lose democracy in a fraudulent election. I won’t say that’s that Alexandre is taking $ 50 million. I won’t talk because I have no proof.”
Bolsonaro replied, “I’m sorry, I had no intention of accusing any deviation of conduct from you three.”
“My rhetoric led me to speak that way. This meeting was not supposed to be recorded, it was reserved. Someone recorded in bad faith, otherwise I wouldn’t be explaining here now,” he said.
In General Augusto Heleno said that “whatever has to be done has to be done before the elections. If you have to punch the table, it is before the elections. If you have to turn the table, it is before the elections.”
Even exercising the right to silence, Heleno suggested that he did not take illegal measures “for lack of climate” or authorization from Bolsonaro.
The rapporteur, tolerant at this stage of the trial, smiled at each skid or advanced signal.
There are criticisms of the overexposure of Minister Alexandre de Moraes and the conduct of the trial, which is attributed to the inexperience of the judges of the coup plot. With the exception of Minister Luiz Fux, they were never judges.
The judge no longer asks the parties. The inquiry is direct.
The excess of heterodoxies that Moraes used-some necessary, but not all-became the object of criticism, inside and outside Brazil, not just by pockets, said the Sheetem .
Regarding statements and acts that are in the complaint, interrogated claimed to be used expressions with Solidasca or “Bravatas” and “bar conversations,” as whistleblower Mauro Cid said.
The session in court seemed contaminated by the troop’s camaraderie climate, a certain “he deceives me that I like”, when each person knows that the other is lying.
Generals accustomed to giving orders contradicted the defenders.
Former Defense Minister Paulo Sérgio Nogueira interrupted lawyer Andrew Farias, who rehearsed a question citing the complaint:
“Will you ask me about the meeting, man?” Then he tried to suggest that a question would not have been combined before with his patron.
In February, lawyer Antonio Carlos Almeida Castro (Kakay), from the prerogative group, celebrated PGR Paulo Gonet’s complaint against Jair Bolsonaro.
“The investigation did something that should be the rule: strictly found the history of the coup,” Kakay wrote in Power360.
“None of the eight accused denied the crime. What was seen was a gymnastics to defend non-participation in the offenses,” he said at the time.
Kakay estimated that the trial could take place until September this year. Lawyers estimate that in October the former president will be arrested.
Luís Roberto Barroso’s mandate ends in September. The next president, Minister Edson Fachin, has already started the transition process with the team.
Moraes printed an accelerated pace to work. But the case can still drag itself for a few years.
In May 2012, there was pressure for the trial of the monthly to be held that year. Minister Ayres Britto, president of the Supreme Court, would retire in November, and feared the postponement for 2013.
The monthly trial began in August 2012 and ended in March 2014. The first arrests were held in November 2013.
