Brazil takes a momentous step against impunity. For the first time in history, a court has convicted a former president and high-ranking military officers of a coup d'état. Far-right leader Jair Messias Bolsonaro, a 70-year-old retired army captain, has been convicted in Brasilia of leading a coup plot to prevent his rival, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, from handing over power after losing the 2022 election. The first chamber of the Supreme Court ruled, by four votes to one, that Bolsonaro committed five crimes, including attempted coup d'état, attempted democratic abolition of the rule of law, and leading a criminal organization. Several generals have also been convicted for the failed coup. Despite formidable pressure from Donald Trump from the United States, the trial has continued. The Brazilian court intends to decide the sentences this Friday.
In Brazil's most politically significant trial in recent years, Bolsonaro has also been convicted of damaging public property and protected assets. Neither he nor the seven other defendants (three generals, an admiral, a lieutenant colonel, and two civilians) appeared in court. All of them have been convicted. The former president (2019-2022), under house arrest, followed the case with his family from his home, also in Brasília.
The decisive vote was cast this Thursday by Carmen Lúcia Antunes Rocha, the only woman on the high court. The judge considers it proven that"a group composed of key government figures and led by Jair Bolsonaro carried out a progressive plan to attack democratic institutions with the aim of harming the alternation of power and undermining the other branches of government, especially the judiciary." After recalling that Brazil recovered democracy 40 years ago, the judge emphasized that"the facts described have not, in essence, been denied" by the defendants. Following her, Judge Cristiano Zanin, who was Lula's lawyer, began to cast his vote.
The investigating judge, Alexandre de Moraes, powerful, controversial and whom the plot wanted to assassinate, voted on Tuesday to convict Bolsonaro of all the crimes because, he said, the evidence shows that the former president recruited, as part of “an authoritarian project of power,” men of his utmost confidence to orchestrate together a plan that would allow him to remain in power despite the electoral defeat in 2022.
These actions included discrediting the electoral system, threatening the judiciary, denouncing nonexistent fraud, plotting the assassination of key state officials, drafting a plan to annul the elections, and attempting to recruit the top brass of the Armed Forces to join the plot. And this Thursday, he emphasized that January 8, 2023,"was not a Sunday stroll, a trip to Disneyland, or an act of spontaneous combustion. It was an attempted coup by a criminal organization." He also released a clip from the day Bolsonaro called the judge a "scoundrel" and said he would disobey his orders.
On Wednesday, Judge Luiz Fux issued a harsh dissenting vote in favor of acquitting Bolsonaro of all charges due to lack of evidence, which also included a request to annul the entire process, considering that the Supreme Court is not the competent court.
The coup movements culminated on January 8, a week after Lula's inauguration. A mob of Bolsonaristas took over the heart of power in Brasilia, including the Supreme Court, which is now hosting the coup trial, similar to the assault on the Capitol in Washington. Bolsonaro was far from Brasilia, in the United States, that day, a fact his defense uses to disassociate him from the violence. More than 600 people—the members of the coup—have been convicted.
Being barred from running in elections until 2030 has not prevented Bolsonaro from serving as the undisputed leader of the opposition to Lula's government. Only house arrest and a judicial ban on using social media have diminished his prominence in the last month. After the conviction, his son, Flávio Bolsonaro, a senator, tweeted on X:"The pillars of democracy have been violated to condemn an innocent man who dared not to bow to a dictator named Alexandre de Moraes."
His conviction will have enormous effects on the 2026 presidential race. He will likely decide who will face President Lula, who is seeking a fourth term.
The risk of flight and the violation of various precautionary measures led Judge Moraes to confine Bolsonaro, confiscate his passport and place an electronic anklet on him in July and withdraw his passport in 2024. The Brazilian considered requesting asylum in Argentina.
The crimes charged against Bolsonaro add up to 43 years in prison. The judges will debate the specific sentence this Friday, and it will be up to Moraes to decide where he will serve his sentence: whether at home, as he prefers given his health problems and age; in a police station in Brasilia, in a special cell in a high-security prison, or in a barracks.
The Supreme Court, invaded by a pro-Bolsonaro mob in 2023, has tightened security to the point that armed officers have flanked the court during deliberations. The live broadcast heightens the expectation, suspense, and spectacle, just as Brazilians like it. This is one of the most transparent courts in the world.
Although wrapped in the rites of the Supreme Court—"with your permission, Your Excellency"—the audience was able to witness the technical debates between the judges, but also some depth charges—from Fox to Moraes and back again—winks, and a few ironic asides that sparked laughter. Clips of the most dramatic moments of the coup were also broadcast.
For President Trump, the Bolsonaro trial is nothing more than a crude political persecution, a witch hunt like the one he believes he suffered in the United States. And he has gone to great lengths to neutralize the trial. He punished Brazil with tariffs and sanctioned several judges. Specifically, he froze Moraes's potential assets in the US and revoked visas for all but three members of the Supreme Court: the two appointed by the so-called Trump of the Tropics and the one who voted for his acquittal. Asked about the conviction as he boarded a helicopter at the White House, he replied:"He is an extraordinary man, very direct," and the Supreme Court's ruling "is a terrible thing," reports Macarena Vidal Liy from Washington.
It is unclear whether this conviction marks the end or a continuation of the political career of Bolsonaro, the first far-right president Brazil elected at the polls in 2019. Ending up in prison was one of his nightmares. In August 2021, when he began plotting to contest the elections under false pretenses of fraud in order to illegally remain in power, Bolsonaro proclaimed from the presidential palace:"I will leave here in prison, dead, or with victory. I want to tell the scoundrels that I will never be imprisoned." The truth is that he lost the election—albeit by less than two percentage points—and maneuvered hard to prevent the transfer of power.
In these dire times for global democracy, Brazil sends a powerful message to the rest of the world with its verdict: justice can punish those who undermine the constitutional order and institutions from within. However, it could be a temporary victory.
Bolsonaro and his loyalists have stepped on the accelerator to have Congress approve an amnesty that would free the former president and others convicted of coup plotting and so-called democratic acts from criminal punishment. Several of the candidates hoping to succeed him as right-wing leader and presidential candidate have promised him a pardon.
