Brazil’s Supreme Court announces investigation against Bolsonaro in case of assault on headquarters of the three branches of government

Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court (STF), the highest court of the South American country, included this Friday night former President Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022) in the investigation of the assault of thousands of protesters now labeled coup plotters against the Government House, the headquarters of the Judiciary and the National Congress last Sunday.

However, calling these protesters coup plotters and their action ‘a coup’ seems daring since they occupied the buildings without weapons or military backing.

Therefore, Russian commentators called the whole thing ‘absurd’ since it was clear from the beginning that the invasion had a purely symbolic character because a coup is impossible without massive armed support.

At the request of the Attorney General’s Office, TSF Judge Alexandre de Moraes complied with the request to include Bolsonaro in the investigation to determine the chain of command, incitement, financing, and organization of the attacks.

Moraes accepted the request to investigate Bolsonaro, among other things, for having published on social networks and then deleted, last Tuesday, a video denouncing fraud in last October’s elections defeated by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

The video showed a jurist accusing the STF and the Superior Electoral Court of fraud in the election in which Bolsonaro was defeated by Lula last October.

“The pronouncement of the former president of the Republic was revealed as one of the occasions in which he positioned himself, in thesis, in a criminal and attacking way against the institutions, especially the Supreme Court and the Electoral Court, imputing its ministers of fraud for an eventual aid to an eventual candidate,” says Moraes in his ruling, quoted by local media.

Moraes also commented on the interrogation request made by the special prosecution team and ruled that it would be an issue to be addressed when the former president returns from the United States.

Bolsonaro left Brazil on December 30, one day before the end of his term, and settled in the home of a business friend in Orlando, United States.

The assault of his followers against the institutions based in Brasília prompted Judge Moraes to request the arrest of Bolsonaro’s former Minister of Justice, Anderson Torres.

The former minister Torres was, until last week, the secretary of Security of Brasilia and is accused of having freed the area of police to allow the assault on the headquarters of the three branches of government, after which he was expelled from office.

President Lula, therefore, determined the federal intervention in Brasilia’s regional government’s security apparatus.