The Brazilian Prosecutor’s Office asks for the former president to remain in power after the 2022 elections, when he was defeated by the Attorney General, Paulo Gonet, hurried on Monday night until the last minute of the deadline to present his opinion and did not move a comma regarding the complaint filed in February. After the interrogations and the collection of evidence of recent months, he considers that there is no doubt that the ultra -rightist ex -president led the plot to hold on to power. Ask to be convicted of five crimes: violent abolition of the democratic state of law, belonging to the armed criminal organization, damage to the assets and deterioration of protected heritage. Together, the maximum penalties for these crimes add up to more than 43 years in prison. For the prosecutor, Bolsonaro generated “consciously an environment conducive to violence and coup” and used the structures and resources of the State “to promote radicalization and democratic rupture.”
The Prosecutor’s Office also asks that the other seven members of the “crucial nucleus” of the plot, the former ministers and senior military commanders of Bolsonaro who moved the threads of the coup strategy moved. Those who leave worse unemployed and could face the same sentence that Bolsonaro is that he was the only one of the three commanders of the Armed Forces to put at the service of the coup; the former Minister of Justice Anderson Torres; Former Defense Minister Paulo Sérgio Nogueira and General Walter Braga Netto, who was head of Cabinet, Minister of Defense and aspired to be vice president. He has been imprisoned since last year for trying to interfere with the investigation. The prosecutor also throws a jug of cold water on the key piece in the process: the former personal secretary of Bolsonaro, whose confessions helped the investigators be pulling the thread. Although he signed an agreement that contemplated criminal benefits in exchange for information, the prosecutor considers that there were important omissions, so he asks for a third of the conviction to be applied.
The investigation concluded that the coup did not prosper because the military resisted Bolsonaro’s pressures and his closest circle. The plan included murdering Lula, vice president Geraldo Alckmin and the number one enemy of the extreme Brazilian right. Even so, on January 8, 2023, after a first week of Lula in the Government, thousands of radicals invaded the main institutional buildings of Brasilia. Many of them already carry hard prison convictions. The Prosecutor’s Office notes that what happened that fateful day may not be the main objective of the group, “but it became desired and encouraged when the last available option became.” The prosecutor also remarks that all movements are tested by the protagonists themselves, who left a large trace of recordings, manuscripts, digital files and messages. After the positioning of the Prosecutor’s Office, the deadline for the accused to present their final allegations is opened. If the judicial times are fulfilled, the trial is expected to be seen for sentence in September.
The prosecution’s request comes a few days after raising tariffs on Brazilian exports to 50% as retaliation for the “witch hunt” that Bolsonaro is suffering in his opinion. One of his children, the deputy to make lobby in favor of his father, has repeated several times in recent days that the solution for the tariff problem is an amnesty to Bolsonaro and the other councilors of coup. He also trusts that the USA will announce specific sanctions against Judge Moraes. Despite the pressures, for the moment the judicial course advances normally.
Bolsonaro knows that he will have it very difficult to dodge the conviction, which would definitely leave him out of the political board. Actually, it already has half a body: electoral justice already condemned him for another cause, having abused the power that the presidency gave him to benefit in the last electoral campaign. It is disabled until 2030, so today it cannot be presented to the presidential elections of 2026. Even so, Bolsonaro acts as the unique and legitimate candidate of the right, which begins to make its allies nervous.
The one with the most ballots to function as a replacement is the governor of the state of São Paulo, who now makes verbal juggling to defend the powerful Paulista industry before the blow that Trump’s tariffs can cause, but without openly condemning the ‘Tarifazo’, so as not to anger the Bolsonaro clan. The equation is difficult: when Eduardo Bolsonaro learned that Freitas was trying to dialogue with representatives of the US Embassy in Brasilia to look for alternatives to the tariff barriers, he called him naive and assured that it was a lack of respect for his work. He also criticized that he has deleted his photo with his magician cap (Make America Great Again) from his social networks, which in recent days ran like gunpowder on social networks.
