Bolsonaro laid out plan for Brazil coup after defeat by Lula, ex-commanders say

Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro presented top military officials with a plan to carry out a coup d’état after his defeat in the October 2022 election, two former commanders have told the police, according to newly released judicial documents.

In testimonies made public on Friday, the former army commander Marco Antônio Freire Gomes and the former air force commander Carlos Baptista Júnior said Bolsonaro held several meetings in December 2022 in which he presented a document that would have served as the basis to overturn the results of the election, which he lost to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

The two military officials say they sought to dissuade him. Their testimony, released by the supreme court, marks the first time that Bolsonaro has been directly named as actively pursuing efforts to remain in power.

Their statements further complicate Bolsonaro’s legal situation as they put the far-right populist at the centre of the alleged conspiracy to keep him in power.

Ahead of the election, Bolsonaro repeatedly cast doubt on the reliability of Brazil’s electoral system and never formally conceded to Lula, but he has always denied that he plotted a coup.

“What is a coup? It is tanks on the streets, weapons, conspiracy. None of that happened in Brazil,” he said during a demonstration last month.

According to Freire Gomes’s statement, during meetings convened after Bolsonaro’s election loss, the defeated leader presented military officials with various supposedly legal means of annulling the elections, including declaring a state of siege.

Freire Gomes told the police that he had warned Bolsonaro the army would not tolerate “any act of institutional rupture” and that his actions could result in his arrest.

According to the federal police documents, Baptista Júnior said he tried to dissuade Bolsonaro of “any extreme measure” and that he believed Freire Gomes’s position was instrumental in avoiding the use of the supposedly legal document. The former air force commander said, however, that Almir Garnier, then the navy commander, told Bolsonaro he would put his troops at his disposal.

“If the commander [Freire Gomes] had agreed, possibly, a coup d’etat attempt would have taken place,” the federal police document quotes Baptista Júnior as saying.

Bolsonaro never signed a draft decree that would have established a state of siege, but eight days after Lula’s inauguration on 1 January 2023, thousands of his supporters stormed the capital, Brasília, in an attempt to unseat the new government.

More than 1,400 people have been charged for their involvement in the insurrection and 131 people have been sentenced so far.

Freire Gomes and Baptista Júnior were questioned by police in recent weeks as part of an investigation into an alleged conspiracy to discredit Brazil’s electoral system and stage a military coup with the objective of keeping Bolsonaro in power. The testimonies of 25 other suspects and witnesses were also made public on Friday.

Bolsonaro has surrendered his passport while the investigation proceeds and is prevented from leaving the country or communicating with the other suspects, who include some of his former ministers and closest allies.

The generals’ statements suggest the investigation is closing in on Bolsonaro, who has separately been banned from running for political office until 2030 over his spread of disinformation during the 2022 election campaign.