Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro oversaw a broad conspiracy to maintain power regardless of the results of the 2022 elections, including personally amending a proposed order to arrest a Supreme Court justice and call new elections after he lost, according to new charges of the Brazilian Federal Police presented Thursday.
Bolsonaro and dozens of senior aides, ministers and military leaders coordinated to undermine the Brazilian public’s confidence in the elections and set the stage for a potential coup, federal police said.
Their efforts included spreading information about election fraud, drafting legal arguments for new elections, recruiting military personnel to support a coup, monitoring judges, and encouraging and guiding protesters who ultimately broke into government buildings, police said.
The explosive allegations were made in a 134-page court order Thursday that authorized a sweeping federal police operation that targeted Bolsonaro and more than 45 of his political allies. The operation resulted in 33 search warrants and the arrest of four people, including two army officers and two former aides of Bolsonaro.
Bolsonaro was the subject of a search warrant and ordered to hand over his passport, to remain in the country and not to have contact with other people under investigation.
Bolsonaro said on Thursday that he was the innocent victim of a politically motivated operation.
“I left the government more than a year ago and continue to suffer incessant persecution,” the former president said to Folha de São Paulo, a Brazilian newspaper. “Forget me. There is already someone else running the country.”
For more than a year before Brazil’s 2022 election, Bolsonaro openly sowed doubt about the security of his nation’s electoral systems and warned that if he lost it would be the result of fraud.
When, in fact, he lost to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Bolsonaro refused to concede unequivocally, and his supporters staged months-long protests that culminated in a January 2023 riot at Brazil’s Congress, Supreme Court, and presidential offices .
Bolsonaro has already been declared ineligible to run until 2030 due to his attempts to weaken voting systems. But the charges unveiled Thursday show that authorities believe the former president and his allies carried out a far more organized plan to subvert Brazil’s young democracy.
Thursday’s operation also targeted Brazil’s former defense secretary, former intelligence chief, former justice minister and former Navy chief, Bolsonaro’s running mate and head of his political party.
This is a developing story.
Paolo Motoryn contributed reporting from Brasilia and Julia Vargas Jones From New York.
