The son of Brazil’s former hard-right president Jair Bolsonaro is lobbying the Trump administration over the “persecution” of his father on charges of leading a coup plot, and has argued the judge leading the case fits the criteria for US sanctions.
Eduardo Bolsonaro, a federal congressman in Brazil, said US officials and pro-Trump lawmakers had been receptive to his arguments that Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva — a democratically elected left-wing president — was “crushing” the conservative opposition and dragging the country towards authoritarianism.
Brazil’s top prosecutor charged Jair Bolsonaro last month with leading a plot to seize back power after he lost the 2022 presidential election to Lula.
Investigators alleged the plotters, including senior military officers, intended to kill Lula, his vice-president Geraldo Alckmin and supreme court judge Alexandre de Moraes. The supreme court is likely to hear the case from next month.
“Jair Bolsonaro is already a condemned man,” Eduardo told the Financial Times in a video interview. “It is very likely they will try to kill him in jail or that he’ll never leave jail . . . the only thing I can do is to go abroad and shout to the world about what is happening in Brazil . . . the country is being plunged into dictatorship.”
He claimed he was not asking for direct US intervention in his father’s case, just for “the restoration of democracy and freedom”.
Eduardo Bolsonaro said he was not personally lobbying for the Trump administration to apply sanctions on de Moraes, but added: “Speaking as a congressman with parliamentary immunity, Alexandre de Moraes has more than met the conditions for [US Treasury] sanctions . . . it’s not me who’s going to get him sanctioned, it’s his own behaviour”.
The congressman declined to say which US administration officials he met during three Washington trips in January and February, or give details of the talks, but said “all the meetings we request are accepted”, noting that he has enjoyed close ties to the Trump camp for years.
Jair Bolsonaro was unable to accept an invitation to Trump’s inauguration because de Moraes forced him to surrender his passport, considering him a flight risk.
Brazilian prosecutors are now weighing whether to take away Eduardo’s passport after two lawmakers from Lula’s party accused him of “crimes against national sovereignty” for allegedly lobbying against Brazil’s supreme court in the US.
Eduardo described their effort as a bid to “silence me”.
President Donald Trump was friendly with Jair Bolsonaro while they were both in office from 2019 to 2020. Trump mentioned Eduardo at a conservative conference last month in Washington, thanking the congressman and telling him: “Say hello to your father . . . great family!”
Eduardo Bolsonaro claimed in his conference speech that Brazil had become a “testing ground for the weaponisation of the courts against conservative libertarians and Christians, always under the noble pretence of ‘protecting democracy’”.
Already there are signs of diplomatic tension.
Last month, Trump’s media group joined US video-sharing platform Rumble in a lawsuit against de Moraes in Florida, accusing him of “extraterritorial censorship”.
The Brazilian justice subsequently blocked Rumble in the South American country for failing to comply with judicial rulings, including a demand that it ban the account of a US-based Brazilian citizen. But the judge in Florida said the orders by de Moraes had no legal force in the US.
The following week, the US state department attacked Brazil over its legal battles with US social media companies. “Blocking access to information and imposing fines on US-based companies for refusing to censor people living in the US is incompatible with democratic values,” it said.
Brazil’s foreign ministry said it rejected “any attempt to politicise court decisions” and accused the state department of “distorting the meaning of [Brazil] supreme court decisions”.
De Moraes is a controversial figure in Brazil who has spearheaded a wide-ranging judicial crackdown on “fake news”. Supporters say his orders to take down posts and accounts have helped save democracy, but opponents accuse him of overreaching and targeting conservatives.
Eduardo argued the US Magnitsky Act, conceived to punish Russian officials for gross human rights violations, could be used against de Moraes because of his actions against free speech and political opponents in Brazil.
The former president’s son said he had learned from how Trump fought his own legal battles that “you don’t work on these issues of legal persecution within the sphere of the courts. You have to work on everything politically”.
A person with links to the Trump camp suggested Eduardo was making inroads. “It’s the policy of the US government to fight back against censorship,” they said.
Prosecutors have laid out the case against Jair Bolsonaro in a 272-page indictment, saying they have evidence of the alleged 2022 coup plot, including a confession by a former close Bolsonaro aide. Supporters of Bolsonaro stormed the presidential palace and congress the following month, occupying and vandalising the buildings before being arrested.
Eduardo mocked the indictment, pointing out that the insurrection in Brasília happened on a Sunday when the government buildings were empty, Lula was out of town and his father was in Florida.
“What kind of a coup is that?” he asked. “It’s about as effective as me trying to fire a bullet from my mobile phone. It’s what in law is called an ‘impossible crime’.”
He remains defiant. “We have no choice,” he said. “Our only option is to carry on walking through the valley of death with a lot of faith in God and to do the right thing.”
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