Feb. 19 (UPI) — Brazil’s attorney general has charged former President Jair Bolsonaro with attempting to lead a coup involving more than two dozen people following his 2022 election loss.
Attorney General Paulo Gonet Branco filed the complaint with Brazil’s Supreme Court on Tuesday, accusing Bolsonaro and 33 others of “carrying out acts against the Three Branches of Government and the Democratic Rule of Law,” his office said in a press release.
Court documents allege that they attempted a coordinated effort to undermine the 2022 election that began in 2021 and included the systematic spreading of disproven claims about electronic voting systems, the mobilization of security forces to prevent opposition voting and the pressure on military officials to support taking military actions to prevent the winner of the election from taking office if Bolsonaro lost.
“The investigations revealed an operation to execute the coup, which even considered the possibility of assassinating the elected president, vice president and a STF justice the deaths of the elected president and vice president,” Branco’s office said. “The plan had the approval of the then-president.”
The 69-year-old Bolsonaro, through his attorney, Paulo Cunha Bueno, has denied the allegations.
“The defense of President Jair Bolsonaro receives with shock and indignation the accusation from the Attorney General’s office, released today by the media, for alleged participation in an alleged coup d’etat,” Bueno said in a statement.
“The president has never supported any movement that aimed to deconstruct the Democratic Rule of Law or the institutions that pave the way for it.”
In a statement, reported by The New York Times, Bolsonaro compared himself to U.S. President Donald Trump, who was similarly indicted several times on charges of attempting to overthrow his 2020 election loss but were not tested in court due to his November election win.
Bolsonaro echoed Trump in saying that he was a victim of the “Weaponization of the justice system,” while describing the charges against him as “nothing more than a desperate attempt to criminalize my political movement, silence millions of Brazilians and rig the next election before a single vote is cast.”
“This is the same failed strategy that was used against President Trump.”
Left-wing former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva beat Bolsonaro, a far-right leader criticized by some as being an authoritarian, in late October’s presidential election.
On Jan. 8, 2023, supporters of Bolsonaro, who had claimed that he could only lose was due to voter fraud, stormed Brazil’s Congress, Supreme Court and Planalto Presidential Palace, resulting in $3.5 million in damages while calling on the military to overthrow Lula.
The indictment states that as part of Bolsonaro’s scheme, he met with ambassadors and diplomatic representatives in July 2022 to spread debunked claims of fraud in election machines to “prepare the international community for the disregard of the popular vote,” the attorney general’s office said.
Then during the second round of elections, security agencies were mobilized to map out and prevent the opposition from voting.
The conspirators also continued to claim fraud despite finding no flaws in the electoral system and maintained groups established in Army barracks in state capitals, the indictment states.
The organization also tried to have the commander of the Army and High Command draft letters and garner support from colleagues to prevent the elected president, if it was not Bolsonaro, from taking office.
The effort, according to the court document, culminated in the Jan. 8 attack.
Bolsonaro supporters, under the supervision of military police who aided in the previous effort to suppress opposition voting, marched in front of the Army Headquarters in Brasilia, demanding military intervention, before invading and vandalized the three branches of government.
Augusto de Arruda Botelho, criminal lawyer and a founder of the Institute for the Defense of the Right to Defense, described the 270-page indictment as a “chronological account” of the alleged crimes Bolsonaro is charged with and is “full of evidence that shows how an attempted coup d’etat began, developed and ended.”
“Furthermore, it describes in a technically impeccable manner Bolsonaro’s leadership in the coup attempt,” he said on X.
Joao Amoedo, founder of Brazil’s liberal New Party, rejected the notion that Bolsonaro should receive amnesty if convicted.
“The country cannot go through a risk like this again,” he said.
