Brazil charges Bolsonaro with leading plot to seize power, kill rivals

Former president Jair Bolsonaro is accused of plotting the assassination of political rivals and a military takeover of Latin America’s largest country.

February 18, 2025 The Washington Post


RIO DE JANEIRO — Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro was charged Tuesday evening with leading an extensive plot to overthrow the Brazilian government following his 2022 electoral loss, a historic rebuke of a politician whose brash and aggressive form of politics dominated the country for years and left it deeply polarized.

Two years after thousands of his supporters attacked and desecrated the three pillars of Brazil’s federal government — the presidential palace, the supreme court and the congress — in protest of an electoral defeat that Bolsonaro had baselessly claimed could only come about through electoral fraud, the country’s attorney general accused him and 33 others in criminal filings of trying to abolish and overthrow the state, destruction of public property and participation in an armed criminal organization.

The criminal case against Bolsonaro was announced three months after the federal police finalized an investigation that accused him of helming a plot to subvert democracy, assassinate political rivals and stay in power through military force despite losing the 2022 election to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, also known as Lula.

Bolsonaro, who in 2023 was banned from running for office for at least eight years, will likely go to trial before the Brazilian Supreme Court, if it accepts the case, setting up a potentially explosive political confrontation. Bolsonaro has for years assailed the legitimacy of the supreme court, which often checked him while he was in power, and called for its disbandment.

“The responsibility for the harmful acts against the democratic order lays with the criminal organization led by Jair Messias Bolsonaro, based on an authoritarian project of power,” said the sealed charging document, obtained by The Washington Post. “Rooted in the structure of the state itself and with strong influence among members of the military, the organization was developed in an hierarchal order, with a division of duties among its members.”

No arrest warrant has yet been issued for Bolsonaro, who had not released a statement as of late Tuesday evening. He has previously denied the allegations and alleged he is a victim of political prosecution.

In addition to Bolsonaro, the attorney general has also charged his former vice-presidential candidate and defense secretary, Walter Braga Netto, in addition to his security chief, Augusto Heleno, and justice minister, Anderson Gustavo Torres.

Brazil’s decision to investigate and ultimately charge Bolsonaro over his role in trying to subvert the country’s electoral institutions — ultimately culminating in a violent assault on its capital — marked a sharp contrast to the aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection in the United States, where President Donald Trump largely evaded consequences. Upon his return to the White House, Trump swiftly pardoned virtually all those involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Brazilian authorities allege Bolsonaro’s plot against the state began as early as 2021, when he launched a social media campaign to undermine confidence in the country’s electoral institutions. He then convened international ambassadors and alleged, without evidence, that the electoral system was rife with fraud — an attempt, the attorney general said, to prime the international community for a coming power grab.

But the most striking attacks against the Brazilian state, authorities said, occurred after Bolsonaro’s loss.

Part of the plot, which police said Bolsonaro authorized, was to poison Lula and assassinate Vice President Geraldo Alckmin and Bolsonaro’s longtime political foe, Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes. The military would then be activated to control any subsequent public unrest.

The plot failed not for a lack of desire, authorities said, but because key members of the armed forces weren’t willing to join in the conspiracy.

If convicted on all the alleged crimes, Bolsonaro faces decades in prison. He is expected to go to trial later this year.