Brazil police accuse Bolsonaro of 2022 coup plot

Former Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro during a rally on Brazilian Independence Day in September. Photo: Getty Images

Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro plotted a coup to overturn the 2022 election along with dozens of ex-ministers and senior aides, federal police said in a formal accusation filed with the country's Supreme Court.

The final police report caps a nearly two-year investigation into Bolsonaro's role in the election-denying movement that culminated in riots by his supporters that swept the capital Brasilia in January 2023, just a week after his rival President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva took office.

Many protesters at the time said they wanted to create chaos to justify a military coup, which they considered imminent. Earlier this week, police arrested five conspirators suspected of planning to assassinate Lula before he took office.

Investigators found evidence Bolsonaro knew of that alleged plan, according to a police sources familiar with the probe.

Bolsonaro said on social media that investigators and the Supreme Court judge overseeing the case had been "creative" and done "everything the law does not say," adding that he would have to look closer at the formal police accusation. His lawyer told Reuters he would wait to see the report before commenting.

The formal police accusations against Bolsonaro are a fresh blow to his plan to run for president in 2026. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's recent victory had buoyed Bolsonaro allies trying to overturn a court decision that has blocked him from public office for attacking the legitimacy of the 2022 vote.

The Supreme Court said it expects to send the police report - the full details of which remain confidential - next week to the country's prosecutor general, who will decide whether to press charges against Bolsonaro and 36 others accused of criminal conspiracy to violently overthrow democracy.

Federal police said they had presented evidence based on search warrants, wiretaps, financial records and plea bargain testimony.

They said conspirators divided their efforts between spreading disinformation about the election, inciting the armed forces to join a coup, and operational support for "coup-mongering actions," along with legal support and intelligence.

Among the accused are two of Bolsonaro's former defense ministers, including his 2022 running mate, retired General Walter Braga Netto; his former national security adviser, retired General Augusto Heleno; former navy commander Almir Garnier Santos; and former Justice Minister Anderson Torres.

Lawmaker Alexandre Ramagem, who ran the Brazilian spy agency ABIN, and the head of Bolsonaro's right-wing Liberal Party, Valdemar Costa Neto, were also among the accused named in a federal police statement.

Lawyers for Heleno and aides for Ramagem declined to comment.

The legal defenses from Braga Netto and Torres said they would wait to officially get the police report before commenting.

Representatives for Garnier Santos and Costa Neto, as well as Brazil's Defense Ministry, army and navy did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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Police on Tuesday arrested five people suspected of involvement in the assassination plot targeting Lula, then president-elect, and his running mate Geraldo Alckmin, days before they took office.

Lula, speaking at the presidential palace on Thursday, said he was lucky to be alive. "The attempt to poison me and Alckmin didn't work and here we are," he said.

Bolsonaro supporters clashed with police at the Brazilian capital in January 2023. Photo: Getty Images

Tuesday's arrests included a deputy minister in Bolsonaro's cabinet who had in his possession a document outlining the plan that had been printed at the presidential palace.

A police source said investigators confirmed Bolsonaro was at the presidential palace when the document was printed, and they had found evidence on cellphones of conversations between aides suggesting the former president was aware of the plot.

Bolsonaro never recognized his October 2022 electoral defeat and he left Brazil days before Lula's inauguration for Florida.

He eventually returned to Brazil and surrendered his passport to police investigating his role in the January 2023 capital riots, when supporters stormed and vandalized the Supreme Court, Congress and the executive presidential palace.

When ordering the seizure of Bolsonaro's passport, a judge cited evidence that Bolsonaro in November 2022 had seen and modified a draft decree to overturn electoral results and lock up Supreme Court judges and the Senate leader.

After tweaking the decree, Bolsonaro summoned military commanders and pressured them to support a coup, according to the police account, based on phone records and plea bargain testimony from the ex-president's former aide-de-camp.

Former army and air force commanders also told investigators that Bolsonaro was involved in plans to overthrow democracy, according to testimony released by the Supreme Court in March.

Federal police finished two separate criminal probes of Bolsonaro and his associates earlier this year formally accusing them of tampering with COVID-19 vaccination cards while in office and of embezzling jewelrey gifted by the Saudi government.

He has denied wrongdoing in both cases.

A person close to Brazil's Prosecutor General Paulo Gonet said he is likely to consider the result of all three probes targeting the former president before making a decision on presenting charges, without any clear deadline.

Even as his legal woes have mounted, Bolsonaro remains the central figure of a right-wing movement driving Brazilian politics for the past six years. His party is the largest in the lower house of Congress and made strides in municipal elections last month.

Brazilian court cases can take years to reach final judgment and even then they are subject to appeals and reversals.

Lula was convicted of taking bribes and spent over a year and a half in jail before the Supreme Court threw out the case in 2021, allowing him to run for his third, non-consecutive presidential term in 2022.