Former Brazilian president, Jia Bolsonaro, faces trial on charges of overseeing a vast scheme to gain power after losing the 2022 election.
The ruling shows an important effort to hold Bolsonaro accountable for the accusations that attempted to effectively dismantle Brazilian democracy by coordinating a wide range of plans to set the scene of the coup.
Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes, who oversees the case, said Bolsonaro explained his decision, “There is no doubt that he knew, handled and discussed the coup plan.”
Seven members of his inner circle, including Bolsonaro and his running companions and former spy chief, were accused of “the violent abolition of the democratic rule of law” and “the violent abolition” of “the coup detato” and other crimes last month.
In a surprising move, Bolsonaro attended the first day of the two-day hearing with his lawyer, but remained silent. Bolsonaro denied the charges, claiming they were politically motivated.
Celso Sanchez Viraldi, one of Bolsonaro's lawyers, did not deny the existence of a coup program and called the details of the plan “very serious” in discussions in the High Court. However, he insisted there was no link between Bolsonaro and the plan.
“Bolsonaro is the most investigated president in the country's history,” Viraldi told the court. “We definitely couldn't find anything.”
The trial, which is not yet scheduled, is the result of a two-year investigation in which police attacked homes and offices, arrested people near Bolsonaro, and secured important confessions from senior aides to the former president.
In an 884-page report sealed last November, investigators accused Bolsonaro of commanding and approving a detailed plot, including a plan to negate the election results, disband the courts, grant special powers to the military, and grant special powers before taking office as president.
Judge Moraes, considered on the far right as an opponent of Mr Bolsonaro, was itself the target of an assassination plot revealed by a coup investigation.
The investigation reveals that in Brazil's nearly 40 years of history as a modern democracy, Brazil has returned to military dictatorship.
The scheme also included sowing unfounded questions about the reliability of Brazilian electronic voting machines for the months leading up to the 2022 vote, according to prosecutors. Bolsonaro argued that the election can only be lost if it is combined in favor of the other party.
After Bolsonaro lost, he and his allies encouraged right-wing protesters to camp in front of military barracks across the country, demanding that the Army overturn the outcome. A week after Lula took office, many of these protesters stormed the Brazilian Hall of Power in a story that reflected the January 6 attack on Capitol by President Trump's supporters.
Experts say it's unlikely that Bolsonaro will be arrested prior to his trial unless Justice Moraes considers him a flight risk.
After police searched Bolsonaro's home and seized his passport last year, he spent two nights at the Hungarian embassy in Brazil, raising doubts about whether he tried to use his relationship with fellow right-wing leaders as leverage to avoid a possible arrest.
If convicted, the charges say Bolsonaro could face him in prison for 12 to 40 years, but political analysts expect his sentence to be shorter. Mr. Bolsonaro has already been prohibited from running for office until 2030, and if convicted he will be permanently ineligible under current law.
In an attempt to save Bolsonaro's political future, lawmakers who formed an alliance with the former president have sought to amend Brazilian laws that ban convicted criminals from taking office.
They are also seeking a new bill that allowed those convicted of riots in Brazil's capital on January 8, 2023, which could also benefit Bolsonaro's once again operating efforts.
Bolsonaro also appears to be betting on his support from Trump. Last week, one of Bolsonaro's sons said he plans to lobby the Trump administration to seek political asylum in the United States and pressure the Trump administration to stop what he calls an unfair pursuit of his father.
Just hours after Brazilian prosecutors indicted Bolsonaro last month, Trump's media company sued Judge Moraes, who oversees the lawsuit in US federal court, accusing him of illegally censoring right-wing voices on social media.
