The former international affairs advisor to the Presidency during the Jair Bolsonaro government Filipe Martins has mobilized discussions regarding the criminal prosecution of the coup plot after the Minister of the Federal Supreme Court (STF) Alexandre de Moraes dismissed and later backed away from the decision to remove his lawyers from the case. The episode mobilized the far right on social media, which accuses the Court of taking him to trial without evidence.
Despite the virtual debate, the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) gathered an arsenal of documents and testimonies that implicate Martins in the attempted coup d’état.
One of the main pieces of evidence against Martins is his participation in the meeting on December 7, 2022, when Bolsonaro brought together the then Minister of Defense, Paulo Sérgio Nogueira, and the commanders of the Armed Forces to present a draft decree with exceptional measures. In the assessment of the Federal Police (PF), the document would support the coup.
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According to the testimony of former Army commander Freire Gomes to the PF, Martins was in charge of reading the decree, exposing its “technical” foundations.
The testimony was corroborated in the testimony of Bolsonaro’s former aide-de-camp, lieutenant colonel Mauro Cid, who informed the PF that Martins withdrew from the meeting with the military after reading the document. “Filipe Garcia Martins Pereira presented and supported the draft decree that would implement exceptional measures in the country”, summarized the PGR when describing the former advisor’s participation in the coup plot.
Martins’ entry and exit records at Palácio da Alvorada between the post-second round of the 2022 elections and the change of government in January of that year show that he was directly involved in the coup articulations led by Bolsonaro. The former president was sentenced to 27 years and 3 months in prison for leading the criminal organization. Martins is mentioned by the PGR in at least three crucial meetings during that period.
One of these meetings took place on December 9, 2022, when Bolsonaro met with Martins and generals Walter Braga Netto and Marcelo Câmara to make adjustments to the coup draft in light of the resistance expressed by the Army and Air Force commanders in joining the coup plan. According to the Attorney General of the Republic, Paulo Gonet, the meeting participants decided that it would be necessary to seek support from other members of the Army High Command in the face of Freire Gomes’ resistance.
An additional factor that shows Martins’ direct involvement in the coup attempt is that his name appeared in the document seized by the PF that contained the delegations of each of the members of the “crisis cabinet” that would be installed after the coup to “establish strategic, security and administrative guidelines for the management of the institutional crisis”. The text said that Martins would take on the role of institutional relations advisor for the exceptional provisional government.
