Brazil charges Bolsonaro with leading plot to seize power, kill rivals

RIO DE JANEIRO – Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro was charged Tuesday evening with leading an extensive plot to overthrow the government after his 2022 electoral loss, a historic rebuke of a politician whose brash and aggressive form of politics dominated Brazil for years and left it deeply polarized.

Two years after thousands of his supporters attacked and desecrated the three pillars of Brazil’s federal government – the presidential palace, the supreme court and the congress – in protest of an electoral defeat that Bolsonaro had baselessly attributed to electoral fraud, the country’s attorney general accused him and 33 others in criminal filings of trying to abolish and overthrow the state, destroying public property and participating in an armed criminal organization.

The criminal case against Bolsonaro was announced three months after the federal police finalized an investigation that accused him of helming a plot to subvert democracy, assassinate political rivals and stay in power through military force despite losing the election to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, also known as Lula.

Bolsonaro, who in 2023 was banned from running for office for at least eight years, will probably go to trial before the Brazilian Supreme Court, if it accepts the case, setting up a potentially explosive confrontation. Bolsonaro has for years assailed the legitimacy of the court, which often checked him while he was in power, and called for its disbandment.

“The responsibility for the harmful acts against the democratic order lays with the criminal organization led by Jair Messias Bolsonaro, based on an authoritarian project of power,” said the sealed charging document, obtained by the Washington Post. “Rooted in the structure of the state itself and with strong influence among members of the military, the organization was developed in an hierarchal order, with a division of duties among its members.”

No arrest warrant has been issued for Bolsonaro, who has previously denied the accusations and claimed he is a victim of political prosecution.

A statement by Bolsonaro’s legal team, posted to his social media accounts late Tuesday, blasted the indictment as “weak, incoherent and absent of facts.” Bolsonaro was “stunned and indignant” at having been accused of taking part in a “fantastical narrative,” the statement said.

The attorney general has also charged Bolsonaro’s former running mate and defense secretary, Walter Braga Netto, in addition to his security chief, Augusto Heleno, and justice minister, Anderson Gustavo Torres.

Brazil’s decision to investigate and ultimately charge Bolsonaro marked a sharp contrast to the aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection in the United States, where President Donald Trump largely evaded consequences. Upon his return to the White House last month, Trump swiftly pardoned nearly all those involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Brazilian authorities allege Bolsonaro’s plot against the state began in as early as 2021, when he launched a social media campaign to undermine confidence in the country’s electoral institutions. He then convened international ambassadors and alleged, without evidence, that the electoral system was rife with fraud – an attempt, the attorney general said, to prime the international community for a coming power grab.

But the most striking attacks on the Brazilian state, authorities said, occurred after Bolsonaro’s loss.

Part of the plot, which police said Bolsonaro authorized, was to poison Lula and assassinate Vice President Geraldo Alckmin and Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, a longtime Bolsonaro foe. The military would then be activated to control any subsequent public unrest.

On Wednesday morning, hours after the charges against Bolsonaro were announced, Trump’s media business, Trump Media & Technology Group, sued Moraes in federal court in Tampa, Florida, alleging that he had been working to “illegally censor American companies operating primarily on American soil.”

Rumble, an online video-sharing platform that has had the financial backing of Vice President JD Vance, also joined the suit.

Moraes, who is expected to hear the case against Bolsonaro, has grown into a fierce antagonist of the global right, clashing with billionaire Elon Musk and, now, Trump.

The lawsuit said Moraes had suspended the U.S.-based accounts of a “well-known politically outspoken user, ensuring no one in the United States can see his content.” The user was not identified.

Bolsonaro’s alleged plot to stay in power failed not for a lack of desire, authorities said, but because key members of the armed forces weren’t willing to join in the conspiracy.

If convicted on all charges, Bolsonaro faces decades in prison. His trial is expected to start later this year.