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Journalism of Courage
Brazil’s former President, Jair Bolsonaro, is on trial this week on charges of instigating a coup following his loss in the 2022 election to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The verdict and sentencing stage commences on Tuesday (September 2) and is scheduled to conclude within ten days.
The far-right populist leader, who was placed under house arrest last month, faces five counts, including armed criminal organisation, attempted violent abolition of the democratic state, coup attempt, aggravated damage by violence and threat, and destruction of protected public property. If found guilty, he faces up to 40 years in prison, including 12 years on the coup charge alone.
Bolsonaro is a close friend of Donald Trump, and in the past has consciously attempted to model himself on the US President, earning him the nickname “Trump of the tropics”. Trump in July announced 50% tariffs on some goods from Brazil as punishment for an alleged “witch hunt” against Bolsonaro. Here is what to know.
What are the allegations against Bolsonaro?
Days after Bolsonaro left office at the beginning of January 2023, his supporters stormed government buildings in Brasilia and tried to get Brazil’s military to take power. Their actions were similar to those of Trump’s supporters who rioted violently at the Capitol in Washington DC, on January 6, 2021, following his defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.
A Brazilian court subsequently banned Bolsonaro from running for office until 2030, citing his continued attacks on the country’s electoral process. He was also charged in three separate criminal cases, one of which accused him of trying to overturn the result of the presidential election, and said he had “planned, acted in, and had direct and effective control over” an attempted coup.
These allegations are substantiated in a 884-page report submitted to the court by Brazil’s Federal Police, which accuses Bolsonaro and 36 others of committing a multi-step conspiracy to overthrow the Lula government. They claim that Bolsonaro personally edited a decree to implement a national state of emergency to prevent Lula from entering office. In two reports adding up to 1,105 pages, the police alleged that the plot involved assassination attempts on Lula, his running mate Geraldo Alckmin, and the crusading Brazilian judge Alexandre de Moraes.
While the prosecution and defence made their cases in July and August, the police charged Bolsonaro and his son, Eduardo, with obstruction of justice. Surveillance of the former president was increased last week, after the police claimed that he was attempting to flee to Argentina and request political asylum. Eduardo migrated to the US earlier this year and successfully lobbied the Trump administration to impose sanctions on Judge Moraes.
Judge Alexandre “Xandao” de Moraes is the 56-year-old Supreme Court justice serving as the rapporteur of the present case, and is on the bench of justices who will decide its outcome. He was allegedly targeted by the accused for his decisions aimed at blocking misinformation on social media by Bolsonaro and his allies.
A constitutional law expert, he began his legal career as Sao Paulo’s state prosecutor in 2002, going on to become state security secretary. He was appointed the Minister of Justice and Citizenship in the centre-right Michel Temer’s government in 2016, and elevated by the former president to the Supreme Court a year later. Until then, he was regarded as a hardliner and accused by left-wing activists of suppressing social movements. However, as a judge, he has seemingly reversed course, training his criticism on Bolsonaro and his allies.
In 2022, he became president of the Superior Court, a post he held during the divisive presidential campaign that year. He used his authority to combat election disinformation on social media, including blocking the accounts of prominent conservative personalities, a move that put him on the warpath with Elon Musk. Musk, who took over the social media site Twitter (now X) in 2022, has long been accused of enabling right-wing conspiracy theories on the platform.
At the height of their spat in August 2024, Moraes shut down access to X for 40 days in Brazil, accusing Musk of failing to tackle disinformation on the platform. The billionaire called Moraes an “evil dictator cosplaying as a judge” and accused him of “trying to destroy democracy in Brazil.”
How did the Supreme Court become a major force domestically?
Brazil’s Supreme Court has become a formidable presence in the country in recent years, giving itself extraordinary powers since 2019 to combat the extraordinary threat posed by Bolsonaro and his allies, according to an analysis in The New York Times. Moraes won the 2018 presidential election riding on a wave of conservative populism and general discontent with the economic policies of the leftist Workers’ Party to which President Lula belongs.
It has only been 40 years since Brazil escaped the throes of a 21-year dictatorship, a period Bolsonaro, a former army captain, once described as a “very good period”. (Bolsonaro has also attacked homosexuality, spoken disparagingly against women and children, and dismissed criticism of his far-right views as “political correctness”.)
The court has come to occupy a space traditionally occupied by legislators and derives its powers from Brazil’s constitution, considered one of the world’s longest. According to a profile of the court in The Economist from April, a single judge may unilaterally pass “monocratic” decisions which bear serious repercussions, simply because the other institutions in the country do their job poorly. The court may have been emboldened further, given the track record of its presidents: every president since 2003 has been accused of breaking the law.
The court’s 2012 ruling in the Mensalão corruption scandal uncovered evidence of bribes, called mensalão or big monthly allowances, to buy votes and support for the Lula presidency in Congress. And the massive Operation Lava Jato (Car Wash), which began as an innocuous investigation into money laundering at gas stations and car washes, implicated Petrobras, the state-owned oil company, and resulted in the impeachment of then-President Dilma Rousseff in 2016, as well as jail time for Lula.
However, the Supreme Court’s pursuit of charges against Bolsonaro has raised concerns of high-handedness, especially with the way it authorised Moraes to pursue litigation against the former president – ordering raids, blocking social media accounts, and on occasion, jailing people without trial.
How does the Trump effect factor in this case?
Bolsonaro has been ideologically aligned with Trump, enthusiastically endorsing and amplifying the US President’s tirade against “fake news”. Half of his time in office coincided with Trump’s first term in the White House (2017-21), during which he broke with the historical Brazilian mistrust of the US.
Both leaders have been implicated in similar legal cases and have accused their political rivals of targeting them unfairly. And most significantly, both have responded to electoral defeats in similar fashion – alleging electoral fraud, refusing to concede the presidency, and instigating insurrections.
Trump’s direct meddling this time – via tariffs, visa bans against the and sanctions against Moraes – will likely prove counterproductive to Bolsonaro’s case. Any concern about the court’s and Moraes’ possible high-handedness in litigating the present case has likely been quelled thus.
“Even Lula’s critics may see Trump’s move as an attack on national sovereignty and the independence of the judiciary,” Oliver Stuenkel, a professor at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV) and a researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace thinktank, told the BBC.
While Bolsonaro has been barred from running for president next year, the conservative candidate who emerges in his place may likely face a setback in an effect mirroring the electoral fortunes of Canada and Australia.
Upon re-entering the White House, Trump proceeded to slap tariffs against Canada for purported fentanyl trafficking and threatened to annexe the country as the “51st state” of the US. The rhetoric proved to be a blessing in disguise for the incumbent Liberal Party of Canada, which until then had been staring at imminent defeat in the parliamentary elections this April. The Conservative Party led by Pierre Poilievre, a Trump acolyte, saw its vote percentage decline steadily as “Canadians literally wanted Trump punched in the face”, and the “existential threat” that the US President posed became the primary issue in the election.
A similar tale unfolded in Australia as its conservative Coalition Party, led by Peter Dutton (who earned the moniker Temu Trump after attempting to model himself on the US president), saw a reversal of its early lead over the incumbent Labor Party following Trump’s tariff announcements and his deeply unpopular policy proposals.
