Despite the former advisor’s sentence to 21 years in prison, his defense saw as positive the admission by Minister Alexandre de Moraes () that records of his entry into the US at the end of 2022 may have been fraudulent.
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Martins’ alleged trip to the USA, accompanying the then president at the end of his term, was used by Moraes as an argument to order the former advisor’s preventive detention, which lasted six months in 2024.
Martins, however, always denied the trip and said that US immigration records were tampered with.
In his speech during the trial, the minister admitted that there is a doubt about the trip of Bolsonaro’s former advisor.
“There are documents saying that there was an attempt to escape and that there was no attempt to escape. There are initial documents from the American authorities saying that he had actually entered the USA, then there are documents that eventually there was a falsification of this entry in the USA. There is still a whole fuss about this entry or not”, said Moraes.
In a statement, Martins’ defense says that the minister disregarded the testimonies of General Freire Gomes and Brigadier Baptista Jr., two witnesses for the prosecution, who denied his participation in meetings with military commanders.
“Statements to the same effect made by Jair Bolsonaro, former Defense Minister Paulo Sérgio and Admiral Almir Garnier were also ignored in the vote”, say the lawyers.
According to defenders, the minister relied only on Mauro Cid’s statement and on records of entry into the Palácio da Alvorada that show signs of irregularity, such as the existence of multiple different signatures attributed to the same person.
“Alexandre de Moraes also acknowledged that the draft attributed to Filipe Martins does not exist in the file, but stated that this would not be relevant to the trial. The vote also admits the irregularity in the preventive detention of the former advisor, without this, according to the minister, altering the merit of the decision”, they state in the note.
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