President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said on Monday that there’s “no doubt” anymore that his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, attempted a coup after the 2022 election, in a reference to accounts to the Federal Police by members of the former administration unsealed on Friday.
“Today we are sure that this country was at serious risk of suffering a coup due to the 2022 elections,” Lula said during a live televised part of a cabinet meeting, mentioning the accounts. “Whoever had any doubt can now be sure that we almost returned to dark times,” he added, in a reference to Brazil’s military dictatorship (1964-1985), during which Lula became nationally famous as a trade union leader organizing strikes in the state of São Paulo.
The former Army and Air Force commanders told the Federal Police that Mr. Bolsonaro recruited them to overthrow democracy in late 2022, hosting meetings to discuss plans and decrees that would justify a coup.
The chairman of Mr. Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party, Valdemar Costa Neto, said Mr. Bolsonaro and members of Congress pressured him to challenge the electoral results in the Superior Electoral Court, which his party indeed acted on, without evidence or legal grounds. The case was quickly dismissed, and the party was fined millions of reais.
Lula said today that a coup failed to take place “not only because some people who were in charge of the Armed Forces didn’t want to do it and didn’t accept the [former] president’s idea, but also because the [former] president is a big coward.”
Lula then added, about Mr. Bolsonaro: “He preferred to flee to the United States … in the expectation that the coup would happen while he was out of the country, because they financed people close to the barracks to try to encourage the coup to proceed.”
Mr. Bolsonaro left Brazil for Florida on December 30, 2022, in order not to attend Lula’s inauguration two days later. In his final hours as president, Mr. Bolsonaro said in a live social media broadcast that he “did all he could” to revert the electoral results “within the four lines of the Constitution” — which is impossible.
After the 2022 election, groups of pro-Bolsonaro demonstrators set up camps near the Army headquarters in Brasília and other military installations across Brazil. A report by the Justice Ministry issued in 2023 sharply blamed the Army for facilitating the camps, which were crucial for the January 8 riots.
A file found in the email inbox of a Navy official contained a draft authorization for a military operation in Brasília, which would have placed the military in charge of security in the capital hours after the riots started.
Lula chose instead to declare a federal intervention, a different legal instrument, and place the deputy Justice minister in charge of security in the city.
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