14th January, 2023
Brazil’s Supreme Court has agreed to investigate whether former president Jair Bolsonaro incited the far-right mob that ransacked the country’s Congress, top court and presidential offices.
Justice Alexandre de Moraes granted a request from the prosecutor general’s office to include Bolsonaro in the wider investigation.
The judge cited a video the former president posted on Facebook two days after the riot. It claimed Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva wasn’t voted into office, but rather was chosen by the Supreme Court and Brazil’s electoral authority.
Although Bolsonaro posted the video after the riot and deleted it in the morning, prosecutors argued its content was sufficient to justify investigating his conduct beforehand.
Otherwise, Bolsonaro has refrained from commenting on the election since his Oct. 30 defeat.
He repeatedly stoked doubt about the reliability of the electronic voting system in the run-up to the vote, filed a request afterward to annul millions of ballots cast using the machines and never conceded.
None of the ex-president’s claims were proved, and the results of the election were recognized as legal by different politicians, including some Bolsonaro allies, and several foreign government.
He has taken up residence in an Orlando suburb since leaving Brazil in late December and skipping the Jan. 1 swearing-in of his leftist successor, and some Democratic lawmakers have urged President Joe Biden to cancel his visa.
Following the justice’s decision late Friday, Bolsonaro’s lawyer Frederick Wassef said in a statement that the former president “vehemently repudiates the acts of vandalism and destruction” from Jan. 8, but blamed supposed “infiltrators” of the protest — something his far-right backers have also claimed.
The statement also said Bolsonaro “never had any relationship or participation with these spontaneous social movements.”
Brazilian authorities are investigating who enabled Bolsonaro’s radical supporters to storm the seats of power in an attempt to overturn results of the October election.
Targets include those who summoned rioters to the capital or paid to transport them, and local security personnel who may have stood aside to let the mayhem occur.