Brazilian police formally accused Bolsonaro of an attempted coup. What comes next?

SAO PAULO (AP) — Police have formally accused Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro and 36 others of attempting a coup to keep the right-wing leader in office after his electoral defeat in 2022. Their allegations threaten to torpedo Bolsonaro’s hopes of returning to politics.

Brazil’s Supreme Court said Friday that police findings were delivered to Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who next week will relay them to Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet. He will decide whether to formally charge Bolsonaro or toss the investigation.

Bolsonaro told the news website Metropoles on Thursday that he is waiting for his lawyer to review the police report, which is reportedly about 700 pages long, but that he would fight the case. He dismissed the investigation as the result of “creativity.”

The former president denies that he tried to stay in office after his narrow electoral defeat in 2022 to leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro has since faced a series of legal threats.

That police are seeking formal charges indicates the investigation found evidence of “a crime and its author,” and it is likely there are legal grounds for the prosecutor-general to file charges, said Eloísa Machado de Almeida, a law professor at Getulio Vargas Foundation, a university in Sao Paulo.

On Friday, the attorney for Bolsonaro’s former right hand, Lt. Col. Mauro Cid, said in a live television interview that his client had informed the Supreme Court that Bolsonaro was aware of the coup plot.

“The then-president knew it all. Actually, he led this organization,” Cid’s attorney, Cezar Bitencourt, told network GloboNews. Just minutes later, Bitencourt partially retracted his statement. “I didn’t say Bolsonaro knew it all. ‘All’ is a lot. He was evidently aware of some things.”

Police said the Supreme Court agreed to the release all 37 names in the police report “to avoid the dissemination of incorrect news.”

Among them are dozens of former and current Bolsonaro aides, including: Gen. Walter Braga Netto, who was his running mate in the 2022 campaign; former Army commander Gen. Paulo Sérgio Nogueira de Oliveira; Valdemar Costa Neto, the chairman of Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party; and his veteran former adviser, Gen. Augusto Heleno.

Braga Netto’s lawyers said they would wait to formally receive the police documents before making any comments. The retired general shared their statement on X late Thursday.

Bolsonaro is already accused separately of smuggling diamond jewelry into Brazil and directing Lt. Col. Cid to falsify his and others’ COVID-19 vaccination statuses. Bolsonaro has denied those charges.

Another probe found he abused his authority by casting doubt on Brazil’s electoral system, and judges on the top electoral court barred him from running again until 2030.

Still, he insists he will run in 2026, and many in his orbit were heartened by President-elect Donald Trump’s recent election win despite his swirling legal troubles.

Local media report that Gonet is already under pressure to move forward with multiple investigations against the former president, and politicians say if the 69-year-old Bolsonaro does stand trial his allies and rivals will race to seize his influence with voters.

“Bolsonaro is no longer the sole leader of the right-wing. He is coming out of mayoral elections in which most of his candidates lost. All these probes don’t help him at all,” said Carlos Melo, a political science professor at Insper, a university in Sao Paulo.

“The governor of Sao Paulo, Tarcísio de Freitas, the radical candidate for Sao Paulo mayorship Pablo Marçal, the governor of Goias state, Ronaldo Caiado … There are politicians lining up to court Bolsonaro voters,” Melo said.

Creomar de Souza, a political analyst of Dharma Political Risk and Strategy, said the formal accusation is “obviously bad” for Bolsonaro, but that it might not impede him if he does decide to run for office again.

“This could give those targeted a chance to portray themselves as being persecuted,” de Souza said, adding that could benefit them.

Bolsonaro’s allies in Congress have been negotiating a bill to pardon individuals who stormed the Brazilian capital and rioted on Jan. 8, 2023, in an attempt to keep the former president in power. Analysts have speculated that lawmakers want to extend the legislation to cover the former president himself.

However, efforts to push a broad amnesty bill would be “politically challenging” in light of the new allegations against Bolsonaro and others, Machado said.

On Tuesday, Federal Police arrested four military and a Federal Police officer, accused of plotting to assassinate Lula and Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes in an effort to overthrow the government following the 2022 elections.

Last week, a man tried to enter the Supreme Court in the capital Brasilia with explosives but was blocked by guards. He threw the explosives outside the building, killing himself.