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Brazil Charges Bolsonaro With Plotting a Coup After 2022 Election Loss
Brazil’s attorney general accused former President Jair Bolsonaro of overseeing a scheme to try to hold on to power. The Supreme Court will decide whether he is arrested.
Jair Bolsonaro during an interview last month. On Tuesday, he said his indictment was “a desperate attempt to criminalize my political movement.” Credit… Victor Moriyama for The New York Times By Jack Nicas
Jack Nicas has covered Jair Bolsonaro since 2021 and interviewed the former president last month. He reported from Rio de Janeiro.
Published Feb. 18, 2025 Updated Feb. 19, 2025, 9:09 a.m. ET
Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s former president, was charged on Tuesday with overseeing a vast scheme to hold on to power after losing the 2022 election, including one plot to annul the vote, disband courts and empower the military, and another to assassinate the nation’s president-elect.
The accusations, laid out in a 272-page indictment, suggest that Brazil came strikingly close to plunging back into, in effect, a military dictatorship nearly four decades into its modern democracy.
Attorney General Paulo Gonet Branco indicted Mr. Bolsonaro and 33 other people, including a former spy chief, defense minister and national security adviser, accusing them of a series of crimes against Brazil’s democracy. The charges essentially adopted recommendations from Brazil’s federal police made in November.
The case will now go before Brazil’s Supreme Court, which will decide whether to order Mr. Bolsonaro’s arrest and have him face trial. If convicted, he could face 12 to 40 years in prison, according to the indictment, though political analysts expect any sentence to be shorter.
In a statement, Mr. Bolsonaro, 69, called the indictment “the weaponization of the justice system” and compared himself to President Trump, a political ally he often emulates.
The accusations are “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,” Mr. Bolsonaro said, adding that he had handed over power peacefully. “This is the same failed strategy that was used against President Trump.”
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