SAO PAULO — Police have charged former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro with 36 others for allegedly plotting a coup to keep the far-right leader in office after he lost the 2022 election. Already barred from running for another term in 2026, he could now face jail time and see his influence diminish.
Brazilian police said the results of Thursday’s case will be presented to the Supreme Court of Brazil, which will refer them to the Attorney General Paulo Gonet, who will decide whether to formally indict Bolsonaro and put him on trial, or dismiss the investigation.
Gonet is already under pressure from his legal peers to move forward with various investigations related to the former President, local media reported. And politicians say that if Bolsonaro is tried in the Supreme Court there will be a race between his allies and his rivals to maintain his influence with the electorate.
“Bolsonaro is no longer the only leader of the right wing. He is coming off a mayoral election where most of the candidates lost. All these questions do not help him at all,” said Carlos Melo, professor of political science at Insper University in Sao Paulo.
Melo added that “the governor of Sao Paulo, Tarcisio de Freitas, the candidate for mayor of Sao Paulo Pablo Marcal, the governor of the state of Goias, Ronaldo Caiado … There are politicians lined up in court who voted for Bolsonaro.”
Bolsonaro told the website Metropoles that he is waiting for his lawyer to review the case, which is reportedly about 700 pages long. But he said he would fight the case and dismissed the investigation as the result of “invention”.
The former President has denied all claims that he is trying to stay in office after losing the 2022 election to leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro has faced a series of legal threats since then.
Police said in a brief statement that the Supreme Court agreed to reveal the names of all 37 people charged “to avoid spreading wrong news.”
A number of former and current Bolsonaro aides were also charged, including Gen. Walter Braga Netto, his former running mate in the 2022 campaign; former military commander Gen. Paulo Sergio Nogueira de Oliveira; Valdemar Costa Neto, chairman of Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party; and his veteran advisor, Gen. Augusto Heleno.
Another investigation led to indictments for Bolsonaro’s alleged role in smuggling diamond jewelry into Brazil without properly declaring it and directing a subordinate to lie about his COVID-19 vaccination status and others. Bolsonaro has denied any involvement in either.
Another investigation found that he abused his authority to question the country’s voting system, and judges barred him from running again until 2030.
Still, he has insisted he will run for office in 2026, and many in his ranks were cheered by Donald Trump’s recent victory in the US election, despite his legal threats.
Creomar de Souza, a political analyst at Dharma Political Risk and Strategy, said the case was “clearly bad” for Bolsonaro, but added that the far-right leader could continue his bid to run again sooner than he is currently allowed. He is not allowed to contest the 2026 election.
“The idea of taking legal action is difficult in politics these days. This would give the target an opportunity to identify themselves as being persecuted,” de Souza told the AP. “We cannot tolerate that disagreements in cases like this may favor Bolsonaro to some extent.”
The indictment for the alleged coup attempt means that the investigation has gathered evidence of “the crime and its author,” said Eloísa Machado de Almeida, professor of law at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, University of Sao Paulo. He said he believed there were sufficient legal grounds for the attorney general to open charges.
Bolsonaro’s supporters in Congress have been debating a bill to pardon the people who stormed the Brazilian capital and sparked unrest on Jan. 8, 2023, in a failed attempt to keep the former President in power. Analysts pointed out that the lawmakers want to extend this law to cover the former President of the country.
However, efforts to enforce the amnesty bill could be “politically challenging” given the recent attacks on judges and information from the investigation, Machado said.
On Tuesday, the Federal Police arrested four soldiers and a Federal Police, accused of plotting to kill Lula and Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes as a means of overthrowing the government following the 2022 elections.
And last week, a man carried out a bomb attack in the capital Brasilia. He tried to enter the Supreme Court and threw explosives outside, he died.
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