Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro will be investigated as part of an inquiry into an alleged attempt to topple the country’s new government, the supreme court has announced.
Thousands of radical followers of the far-right populist marauded through Brazil’s three most important democratic institutions last Sunday, apparently convinced by a tsunami of fake news that last October’s presidential election – which Bolsonaro lost – was rigged.
Following those attacks in Brasília, Bolsonaro shared a video on social media which used false information to question the victory of his leftist adversary, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who was sworn in as president on 1 January.
Late on Friday, the supreme court judge Alexandre de Moraes accepted a request from the attorney general’s office that the ex-president be included in the investigation as a result of that post, which Bolsonaro later deleted.
The investigation intends to prosecute the former President Jair Bolsonaro’s alleged involvement in the January 8 attacks on government buildings in the capital Brasilia.
The court’s decision follows a request by Brazil’s public prosecutor office, several members of which released a statement Friday describing the events of that day — when Bolsonaro’s supporters stormed and destroyed government buildings to protest the election of his rival Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva — as “antidemocratic acts.”
“By posting a video on January 10 (two days after the attack) questioning the legality of the 2022 presidential elections, Bolsonaro delivered a public incitement to commit crimes,” the statement said.
On Tuesday, Bolsonaro shared a Facebook video of a woman questioning the victory of Lula da Silva, who defeated Bolsonaro in the October presidential election. The video was then deleted a few hours later.
Prosecutors say although the video was posted after the attacks, there is a “connection” between the content in Bolsonaro’s video and the violence in Brasilia.
The Supreme Court said Friday it had accepted the public prosecutor’s request to investigate Bolsonaro’s alleged involvement. It also approved the prosecutor’s request to ask Meta to preserve the video he posted on Facebook, and to investigate its impact.
Until now, the former far-right Brazilian president has not been directly linked to, or involved in, the investigation into the January 8 events.
Separately from the prosecutor’s request and without referring to any accusation in particular, Bolsonaro’s lawyer, Frederick Wasser, said on Friday the former president always “rejected all illegal and criminal acts…and has always been a defender of the Constitution and democracy.”
“President Bolsonaro vehemently rejects the acts of vandalism and depredation of public patrimony committed by the infiltrators in the protest. He never had any connection or participation in these spontaneous social movements done by the people,” the former president’s son, Flavio Bolsonaro, said in a statement on Friday.
Bolsonaro faces several investigations for anti-democratic statements he made as president, including repeated claims that the election system was open to fraud. PL party leaders now fear he will be held responsible for Sunday’s storming of government buildings. While they do not think he will face arrest, they fear he could be declared ineligible to run in the 2026 election.
