This Tuesday, September 2, the trial against the former president of Brazil Jair Messias Bolsonaro, 70, enters the final phase. The ultra -rightist is to subvert the electoral result and remain in power after being defeated in the 2022 elections. The Supreme Court, in Brasilia, has summoned five sessions to deliberate in this historical trial. Never a Brazilian former president or justice for an assonada. Until now.
They will be issued by Bolsonaro and the other seven accused of the conspiracy core. Their deliberations will be broadcast live.
For the president of the United States, Donald Trump, the trial is “a witch hunt” and in an explicit attempt of pressure has punished Brazil with 50% tariffs and the judges, with sanctions.
These are the keys to the process:
The main defendant
Jair Bolsonaro, leader of the Brazilian right, was president (2019-2022), army captain and deputy. It is unknown if you will go to the deliberation sessions, it is not obliged to appear. He has been in his home for weeks, a Brasilia villa, since August 4, when the judge for skipping precautionary measures.
Given the risk of escape, the judge withdrew his passport in February 2024 and last July. Police patrols watch their home after investigators discovered a letter for. It is prohibited from contact with foreign authorities, approaching embassies, speaking by phone and using social networks.
The ultra -rightist suffers from health problems, gastrointestinal and hypo.
The accusation
Bolsonaro is judged for five crimes: attempt at violent abolition of the democratic state of law, coup d’etat, belonging to the armed criminal organization, damage to the government’s assets and deterioration of protected heritage. They add a maximum penalty of 43 years in jail.
The past by the Attorney General’s Office argues that the former president directed “a structured criminal organization to prevent the result of the popular will expressed in the 2022 elections being fulfilled, implying his continuity in power without the endorsement of universal suffrage.” Those elections were won by Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the current president.
The plot culminated in the Executive Power, the Legislative and the Judicial, on January 8, 2023. That day Bolsonaro was in the US.
The coup plotters, according to the complaint, contemplated poisoning President Lula, killing his vice president, Geraldo Alckmin and the instructor judge, Alexandre de Moraes.
Bolsonaro declares himself innocent of all charges and insists that he always acted “within the four lines of the Constitution.” In his, in June, he emphasized that “without a leader, without armed forces and without financial support, there is no blow.” If he admitted that he held meetings to analyze options to turn the electoral result.
Others accused
Together with Bolsonaro, there are several former senior positions of his government: Lieutenant Colonel Mauro Cid (who was the personal secretary of the President), General Walter Braga Netto (Minister of the Civil House and candidate for vice president in 2022), General Gustavo Heleno (Minister of Institutional Security), General Paul La Marina), Police Commissioner Anderson Torres (Minister of Justice) and Commissioner Alexandre Ramagem (director of the ABIN, the internal espionage agency).
Braga Netto, the first four -starred general in Brazil, has been in provisional prison for months in a military prison for obstructing investigations.
The tests
The Pilar of the complaint the testimony of its secretary, who agreed to collaborate in exchange for a minor penalty. Lieutenant Colonel intermediate in many contacts among the accused. Thanks to that, the police compiled hundreds of messages detailing the plot preparations.
The Prosecutor’s Office accuses Bolsonaro to sow doubts, from 2021, about the security of the voting system to answer the result. The researchers found a decree draft to give legal varnish to the cancellation of the elections. The document with the magnicide plans was printed in an office of the presidency.
And there are the meetings in which Bolsonaro, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, to subvert the electoral result. Army and aeronautical commanders denied. The first warned him that this was illegal. The Prosecutor’s Office holds that the coup failed because the military did not join.
The judges
The five members of the First Supreme Chamber of the Supreme Court will issue the other protagonist is the instructor of the case, Moraes, which temporarily closed X in 2024 and. He has marked the passage to the court throughout the judicial process and, in general, has been surrounded by his colleagues. The complaint against the eight was unanimously accepted. Only one of the judges, Luiz Fux, has exhibited discrepancies with the hardness of sentences throughout the process.
Moraes, lawyer, was Minister of Justice; His courts are: Carmen Lúcia Rocha, the only woman in the Court, also a lawyer; Fux, a jurist; Cristiano Zanin, who was Lula’s personal lawyer (LO) and Flávio Dino, Minister of Justice on the day of the assault on Brasilia. The last two were appointed by President Lula. Bolsonaro tried to separate them from the case, but the appeal. He was rejected.
The calendar
The Supreme Court, first and last instance in this case, and issue a sentence. They will be 2, 9, 10 and 12 September. This Tuesday, starting at nine, the investigating judge will read a summary of the judicial process. The Attorney General of the Republic, Paulo Gonet, and the oral argumentation of the defenses of the eight defendants in alphabetical order of the name (each time has an hour) will follow. Bolsonaro is the sixth.
The calendar designed by the Supreme Court implies that on September 7, Independence Day and coincides with the deliberations. That Sunday, Lula will lead the official parade in Brasilia while the followers of the former president have called concentrations throughout the country in defense of freedom of expression.
The deliberations
The vote of the judges is expected as of Tuesday, September 9. Moraes will be the first to announce whether to consider each innocent or guilty prisoner of each crime. The decision is made by majority, three votes. Established innocence or guilt, the magistrates will deliberate on the penalty. Some judge could request a postponement of up to 90 days to study the case more thoroughly, although it is considered very unlikely in this case.
The Supreme Court of Brazil is one of the most transparent in the world. As Rubens Glezer, professor of constitutional law at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation, “the deliberations are televised live. Public access to the room is guaranteed. And, as the magistrates deliberate in public, the disagreements are all exposed live and have a very high degree of advertising”. The sessions are broadcast on the Court’s YouTube channel in addition to television and justice radio.
This judicial process has been much faster than most cases of the highest court. Togados want to issue a sentence before next year. In October 2026, Brazilians choose President, Governors and Congress.
Appeal
The jurisprudence of the Supreme Court indicates that, in the event that two of the magistrates disagree with the majority, it is possible. But specialists warn that it occurs in very exceptional cases, it concerns details, and does not usually change the verdict.
Relevance
In addition to the severity of crimes and the importance of the defendants, there are other factors that contribute to the importance of the trial, explains Glezer, a professor of constitutional law: “This is a force test about the ability of the courts to punish those authoritarian leaders who try to give coups. In that sense, the relevance transcends Brazil. It is deeply important for Latin America, but also for the world. explicitly.
Trump’s pressure
President Trump has imposed a 50% tariff on all exports from Brazil and economic sanctions to Judge Moraes and several of his colleagues of the highest court in explicit attempt to press the court that judges his ally. “This trial should not be underway. It is a witch hunt that must end immediately!”, He proclaimed in a tweet in July.
The effects
Although in 2023 it was disabled in a different case and cannot be presented to the elections until 2030, Bolsonaro treasures a large political capital. He leads the opposition to President Lula. But the countdown for the verdict inside the family and right clan. Three governors who sound for 2026 have already promised the pardon if they won. Meanwhile, Bolsonarism maneuver for Congress to approve an amnesty for those convicted of the coup attempt and the assault on Brasilia. More than 1,200 people – material authorities of the invasion – have been tried and punished by sentences up to 17 years.
