Bolsonaro convicted in coup plot, becomes first Brazilian ex-president guilty of attacking democracy

Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro was convicted by a Supreme Court majority on Thursday of being part of a criminal organization, a powerful blow to the far-right leader in his trial over an alleged coup plot.

The presumptive ruling by a majority of a panel of five justices in Brazil’s Supreme Court makes Bolsonaro the first former president in the country’s history to be convicted for attacking democracy.

Three judges so far have voted to convict, one acquitted, and one remains to vote.

The conviction of Bolsonaro, a former Army captain who never hid his admiration for the military dictatorship that killed hundreds of Brazilians between 1964 and 1985, echoes legal condemnations this year for far-right leaders elsewhere, including France’s Marine Le Pen and the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte.

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It is likely to further enrage Bolsonaro’s close ally U.S. President Donald Trump, who has already called the case a “witch hunt” and slammed Brazil with tariff hikes, sanctions against the presiding judge, and the revocation of visas for most members of Brazil’s high court.

The verdict was not unanimous, with Justice Luiz Fux on Wednesday breaking with his peers by acquitting the former president of all charges.

That single vote could open a path to challenges to the ruling, potentially bringing the trial’s conclusion closer to the run-up of the 2026 presidential elections, in which Bolsonaro has repeatedly said he is a candidate despite being barred from running for office.

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Fux’s vote also ignited a surge of righteous relief among the former president’s supporters, who hailed it as a vindication.

“When coherence and a sense of justice prevail over vengeance and lies, there is no room for cruel persecution or biased judgments,” Michelle Bolsonaro, the former president’s wife, posted after Fux’s vote.

Bolsonaro’s conviction marks the nadir in his trajectory from the back benches of Congress to forge a powerful conservative coalition that tested the limits of the country’s young democratic institutions.

His political journey began after a brief career as an army paratrooper, when he became a city lawmaker in Rio de Janeiro in the late 1980s. He went on to be elected as a congressman in Brasilia, where he quickly became known for his defense of authoritarian-era policies in the early years of Brazil’s democracy.

His reputation as a firebrand was fueled by interviews like one in which he argued that Brazil would only change “on the day that we break out in civil war here and do the job that the military regime didn’t do: killing 30,000.”

While long dismissed as a fringe player, he refined his message to play up anti-corruption and pro-family values themes. These found fertile ground as mass protests erupted across Brazil in 2014 amid the sprawling “car wash” bribery scandal that implicated hundreds of politicians – including President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, whose conviction was later annuled.

Burning anti-establishment anger helped lay the path for his successful 2018 presidential run, with dozens of far-right and conservative lawmakers elected on his coattails. They have reshaped Congress into an enduring obstacle to Lula’s progressive agenda.

Bolsonaro’s presidency was marked by intense skepticism about the pandemic and vaccines and his embrace of informal mining and land-clearing for cattle grazing, pushing deforestation rates in the Amazon rainforest to record highs.

As he faced a close reelection campaign against Lula in 2022 -an election that Lula went on to win - Bolsonaro’s comments took on an increasingly messianic quality, raising concerns about his willingness to accept the results.

“I have three alternatives for my future: being arrested, killed or victory,” he said, in remarks to a meeting of evangelical leaders in 2021. “No man on Earth will threaten me.”

In 2023, Brazil’s electoral court, which oversees elections, barred him from public office until 2030 for venting unfounded claims about Brazil’s electronic voting system.

PROTECTING DEMOCRACY

Bolsonaro’s conviction and its durability will now emerge as a powerful test for the strategy that Brazil’s highest-ranking judges have adopted to protect the country’s democracy against what they describe as dangerous attacks by the far-right.

Their targets included social media posts that they say spread disinformation about the electoral system, as well as politicians and activists. Sending a former president and his allies to jail for planning a coup amounts to its culmination.

The cases were largely led by the commanding figure of Justice Alexandre de Moraes, appointed to the court by a conservative president in 2017, whose stance against Bolsonaro and his allies was celebrated by the left and denounced by the right as political persecution.

“They want to get me out of the political game next year,” Bolsonaro told Reuters in June, referring to the 2026 election in which Lula is likely to seek a fourth term. “Without me in the race, Lula could beat anyone.”

Last week, as Moraes read his vote, he enumerated the evidence he believed showed Bolsonaro and his allies were guilty of plotting to not only stop Lula from taking office, but also to poison Lula and his running mate.

The charges are also tied to Bolsonaro’s alleged incitement of riots in January 2023, when thousands of his supporters stormed the Congress, presidential palace, and Supreme Court in Brasilia, the capital.

Bolsonaro’s lawyers have maintained his innocence on all counts.

The historic significance of the case goes way beyond the former president and his movement, said Carlos Fico, a historian who studies Brazil’s military at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

Four other defendants found guilty come from a military background, including Bolsonaro’s running mate in the 2022 election, General Walter Braga Netto. The verdict marks the first time since Brazil became a republic almost 140 years ago that military officials have been punished for attempting to overthrow democracy.

“The trial is a wake-up call for the Armed Forces,” Fico said. “They must be realizing that something has changed, given that there was never any punishment before, and now there is.”