Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is looking to Trump and the United States to avoid prison

Jair Bolsonaro has lasted more than two years: defeat in the elections, criminal cases, sleep of suspicious agents. So when she got some good news last week — an invitation to President-elect Donald J. Trump’s inauguration — it lifted her spirits.

“I feel like a kid again at Trump’s invitation. I am angry. I don’t take Viagra anymore,” the former Brazilian president said in an interview on Tuesday, using his trademark sophomoric humor. “Trump’s actions are something to be proud of, right? Who is Trump? The most important man in the world. “

But reality has a way of ruining plans.

Brazil’s Supreme Court confiscated Bolsonaro’s passport as part of an investigation into whether he attempted a coup after losing re-election in 2022. To attend Monday’s inauguration, he had to apply permission from the judge of the Supreme Court Mr. Bolsonaro. also his political enemies.

On Wednesday, Brazil’s attorney general recommended denying his request. Mr. Bolsonaro admitted that he might watch from home.

That split screen – Mr Trump’s return to the world’s most powerful job while Mr Bolsonaro stays at home on court orders – will fill the paths of the two political doppelgängers, who have been so different since then. ‘that he took them out of office and then claimed fraud.

In 2025, Mr. Trump will be in the White House – and Mr. Bolsonaro will probably be in jail.

Three separate criminal investigations are closing in on Mr. Bolsonaro, and expectations are high in Brazil – including from Mr. Bolsonaro himself – that he will soon be at the center of one of the country’s most high-profile trials. he is the history of Brazil.

“I can always be seen,” Mr. Bolsonaro, 69, said in a 90-minute interview, in which he aired complaints, repeated conspiracy theories and acknowledged concerns about his future. “I don’t think the system wants me locked up; he wants to destroy me.”

But developments in the United States have given Mr. Bolsonaro new hope. Mr. Trump, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are leading a global campaign for freedom of speech, he said, and he hopes it could change Brazil’s political landscape. “Social networks decide elections,” he said.

For years, Mr. Bolsonaro has accused Brazil’s Supreme Court judge, Alexandre de Moraes, of censoring conservative voices and persecuting him politically. Indeed, Justice Moraes has become one of the most aggressive internet police in democracy, ordering social networks to block at least 340 accounts in Brazil since 2020, and often maintaining their cause.

This led to a clash with Mr Musk last year, which resulted in a judge banning Mr Musk’s social network. Musk, X, in Brazil. Mr. Musk in the end. But the controversy over Mr Bolsonaro’s appeal to Brazil’s Supreme Court has caught the world’s attention.

So Mr. Bolsonaro said he was happy last week when Mr. Zuckerberg said his company would “work with President Trump against” foreign governments that want “more censorship.” One of his biggest examples is a “secret court” in Latin America “that can order companies to quietly remove everything.”

Brazilian authorities took it as a shot across the bow. The next day, Justice Moraes warned that social networks cannot operate in Brazil without complying with Brazilian law, “regardless of the courage of the big tech executives.”

Mr. Bolsonaro’s view is different. “I love Zuckerberg,” he said. “Welcome to the world of good people, freedom.”

How exactly will Mr. Trump and the tech giants be affected by his many legal and political challenges? Mr. Bolsonaro is unclear. “I would never try to give Trump advice,” he said. “But I hope his policies will spread to Brazil.”

Elizabeth Bagley, the US ambassador to Brazil, said Mr Bolsonaro’s wish for the US to bail him out was impossible. The US government does not interfere in the judicial process of other countries, he said.

Mr. Bolsonaro has bigger problems than censorship. Over the past year, Brazil’s federal police have formally charged him with crimes in three separate cases.

In one, police said Mr. Bolsonaro took money from the sale of jewelry he received as a state gift, including a diamond Rolex watch from the Saudis that his aides sold at the dealership. a store in Pennsylvania. Mr. Bolsonaro blamed the situation on unclear rules about who owns such gifts.

Within seconds, police said he was involved in a conspiracy to falsify his Covid-19 vaccination record so he could travel to the United States. Mr. Bolsonaro said he had not received the vaccine, but denied any knowledge of efforts to falsify his record.

And in the most serious charge, police said Mr. Bolsonaro “planned, acted, and had direct and effective control over” a coup attempt.

The federal police recently released two 1,105-page reports detailing his allegations, including his own modification of a decree designed to prevent the winner of the election, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, from taking office.

Mr. Bolsonaro abandoned the plan after he raised three leaders in the Brazilian army and two refused to participate, police said.

In the interview, Mr. Bolsonaro vehemently denied any coup plotting — he gave power, he said — but admitted he had discussed the order. “I will not refuse you,” he said. “But in the second conversation, I gave up.”

He said he considered the emergency because he thought the election was stolen, but Justice Moraes blocked his party’s request to overturn the election results. Then his team realized that Congress would have to agree to the terms as well. “Forget it,” he said. “We lost.”

However, police say there is a far darker plan at the heart of the conspiracy: the assassination of Mr Lula, his ally and Justice Moraes. Police arrested five men they accused of plotting the murder, four of them from the elite Brazilian army.

These men, the police said, were sent to Justice Moraes’ neighborhood several weeks before Lula’s inauguration. They planned to kidnap the judge but abandoned their plan after Mr. Bolsonaro failed to declare a state of emergency, police said.

Police said Mr Bolsonaro was aware of the plan. The closest connection the police have revealed is that the plan was printed at the president’s office and taken to the president’s residence.

Mr. Bolsonaro denied that he knew anything about such plots. “Whoever made this possible plan should be held accountable,” he said. “On the other hand, there was no attempt to kill three officials.”

He later downplayed the charges. “However, I think this is just another dream – bravado. Nothing. This plan cannot be carried out. It is impossible,” he said. He admitted that he knew the accused leader of the plot. “Both are responsible for what everyone does,” he said. “Even though he didn’t take any measures, as far as I know.”

Brazil’s attorney general is weighing whether to indict the former president, which could lead to a high court hearing this year and possible prison terms.

While Mr. Bolsonaro has maintained his innocence, he admitted that he was worried about his chances because Justice Moraes could help convict him. “I’m not worried about being judged,” he said. “My concern is who will judge me.” After police confiscated his passport last year, he spent two nights in the Hungarian embassy seeking asylum.

Brazil’s courts have already taken action. Six months after leaving office, Brazil’s electoral court, led by Justice Moraes, banned Mr. Bolsonaro from holding office until 2030 for his attacks on Brazil’s electoral system.

Mr. Bolsonaro called the ruling a “violation of democracy” and said he was trying to find a way to compete in next year’s presidential election. He recommended two judges to preside over the electoral court before the election, he said. Those judges told him, he said, “that my indifference was unreasonable.”

Polls show Mr Bolsonaro is the most popular conservative candidate in Brazil, but many on the right are looking for new options. Some speculated about his son: One, Flávio, 43, is an experienced senator, while the other, Eduardo, 40, is an English-speaking congressman who has established close ties to the MAGA movement.

But Mr. Bolsonaro is not yet ready to hand over the keys to his actions. He said he would support his son to stay in Congress for now. “For you to be president here and do the right thing, you have to have experience,” he said, as another son, Carlos, 42, looked on blankly.

If Mr. Bolsonaro is to make a political comeback, he has said he will focus his administration on strengthening ties with the United States and distancing himself from China.

But first, he just wants to go to Washington this weekend. “I’m asking God to give me his hand,” Mr. Bolsonaro said of Trump. “I don’t even want a picture, I just want to shake his hand.”