Legal experts lay out potential crimes committed by the Bolsonaro entourage

The draft of a decree found by Federal Police at the home of former Justice Minister Anderson Torres — which would have placed the electoral courts under a state of emergency and overturned the presidential election — is not only evidence of an attempted coup, but also of several crimes, legal experts tell The Brazilian Report.

On Thursday, it was revealed that the police had found the draft during a search and seizure operation at Mr. Torres’s home. As the Brasília government’s head of public security until last weekend, a warrant was issued for his arrest due to his department’s poor response to Sunday’s riots in the capital. 

Mr. Torres was in Florida on vacation while the riots unfolded and returned to Brazil in order to turn himself in. The current justice minister, Flávio Dino, said the Brazilian government would request the extradition of Mr. Torres had he failed to surrender by Monday.

Under the terms of the draft decree, the federal government would have created a committee with 17 members, eight from Brazil’s Defense Ministry. The head of the board would be a member of the military, appointed by then President Jair Bolsonaro, and would have full power over the top electoral court, including barring the justices and court employees from entering its headquarters.

For years, Mr. Bolsonaro has disparaged the country’s electoral system — falsely claiming that it can be rigged. The hordes of far-right radicals who stormed and ransacked government buildings in Brasília on January 8 were fueled by the belief that a vast conspiracy involving political parties and electoral courts stole the October 30 election in favor of the victor, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

That rationale lays the groundwork for the putschist decree. The language of the...