Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, during a rally held this Tuesday at a restaurant in an amusement park in Orlando, Florida. JOE SKIPPER (REUTERS)
A Brazilian senator assured this Thursday at a press conference in Brasilia that an adviser to Jair Bolsonaro invited him, in the presence of the then president, to participate in a conspiracy to prevent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva from coming to power.
According to the account of Senator Marcos del Val, the proposal was formulated by the former deputy and advisor to Bolsonaro Daniel Silveira and that the president "listened to it in silence."
The plan was for the senator to take advantage of his close relationship with Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, the highest electoral authority and scourge of Bolsonarismo, to secretly record some compromising statement that would allow him to be arrested.
That would unleash an unprecedented institutional crisis that, according to the plot, would launch a process to annul the elections and prevent the winner, Lula, from
The revelations have become the talk of the day in Brazil because they are the strongest indication yet of Bolsonaro's involvement in a coup.
Bolsonaro has not commented, for the moment, on the accusations.
The former president remains in the US, from whose authorities he has requested a tourist visa to extend his stay.
He remains in Florida, where he arrived two days before the end of his term.
After questioning the voting system, the recount and the electoral authorities for many months, the ultra-rightist never openly admitted his defeat.
Judge Moraes, who is also investigating the attack on the powers that be and on Bolsonaro for encouraging it, has ordered that the complainant senator be questioned by the police about the meeting, held on December 9, three weeks before the end of his term.
In any case, the senator complainant has changed, with the passing of the hours and after talking on the phone with Bolsonaro's children, relevant elements of his story.
There is not even certainty where the meeting between him, the president and the former deputy who proposed the plan was held.
Between the first version and the last, Bolsonaro's degree of involvement varies.
From being the president who commissioned him to record the judge, to listen in silence how his adviser verbalized the proposal without endorsing or rejecting it.
And it is that De Val first gave an interview to Veja
magazine
, then announced it on networks and finally offered a press conference.
De Val is a police officer who entered the Senate riding the anti-system and anti-political wave led by Bolsonaro in 2018. He is in the middle of an eight-year term in the Upper House.
The third protagonist is another former police officer who was also elected deputy four years ago and who has stood out as one of the most radical Bolsonaro parliamentarians for his constant attacks on the Supreme Court and its members.
Last April, the highest court sentenced him to nine years in prison for attacking democracy, but the fact is that he was free.
This Thursday he has been arrested again accused of disobeying judicial decisions and laughing at the judicial system.
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