The Wall Street Journal defended in an editorial on Sunday (27), that Filipe Martins, former advisor to () and one of the defendants of the 2022 coup plot, faces “dubious accusation” that led him to be arrested preventively in early 2024.
The publication of the Martins’s case is one of those that needs to be determined due to the occurrence of fake travel records in the Customs Department and Border Protection (CBP) in Florida, United States.
“A Brazilian court has been using fake CBP records to stop Mr. Martins for risk of escape since March 2024 in the investigation of an alleged Bolsonaro coup against Brazilian President Luiz Inacio ‘Lula’ da Silva,” says the editorial. “Mr. Martins should be free while preparing his defense,” he points out.
Currently Bolsonaro’s former manager of international affairs faces precautionary measures such as the use of an electronic anklet and banning of Brazil. He was arrested at the beginning of 2024 and released about 6 months later.
In the editorial, the newspaper also cites Trump’s tariff against Brazil and says that the American’s main complaint against the country is the STF criminal action against former president Bolsonaro in the context of democratic danger, in the publication of the publication. “The deterioration of Brazilian democracy is worrying,” says the WSJ.
“It would be better for Mr. Trump to start at home with a transparent investigation into how false records for Mr. Martins were published on a CBP website, then disappeared and reappeared. This would have the additional benefit of innocenting Mr. Martins from the accusation of illegally fleeing from his country.”
violent abolition of the Democratic Rule of Law, armed criminal organization, qualified damage and deterioration of listed heritage. He makes up what the PGR (Attorney General of the Republic) called two of the coup plot, responsible for the management of action.
The former advisor was arrested at the beginning of 2024 after the PF identified that his name was on the list of passengers who would embark on abroad in the presidential entourage. The document was found in the media of the whistleblower, former Assistant of Bolsonaro Orders, as narrates report of the corporation.
Based on this, the STF minister decreed the arrest of Martins. On July 14, 2025, however, Lieutenant Colonel Mauro Cid told the Supreme Court that Martins was not on the final passenger list of the flight that took Jair Bolsonaro to the United States after the former president lost the elections.
Martins’s defense for months maintains that he did not embark with Bolsonaro to escape the country. “Filipe did not leave Brazil. They used a provisional list to say he left. This is an illegal prison,” says Jeffrey Chiquini, Martins’s lawyer.
Bolsonarists have used the narrative around the former advisor to reinforce the thesis that his arrest was unfair and contest the process of the coup plot in the STF. Allies of the former president intensified the publications in which they accuse the Supreme and the PF after Cid’s speech.
