The day Brazil voted in the second round of the 2022 presidential elections, Jair Messias Bolsonaro, 68, went to bed early.
He was shocked, devastated.
The far-right did not expect to lose.
Less than 48 hours later he got going.
He was still acting president, head of state and supreme commander of the Armed Forces.
He summoned the Minister of Defense and the military leadership at his official residence, the Alvorada Palace, in Brasilia, to plan how to prevent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, 78, from assuming power on January 1, 2023. The testimonies Generals Marco Antonio Freire Gomes (then head of the Army) and Carlos de Almeida Baptista (Air Force), questioned as witnesses in the investigation into the assault on the institutional heart of Brazil, have confirmed that Bolsonaro tried to recruit them to carry out a coup .
They both refused;
The head of the Navy, Admiral Almir Garnier, embraced the plan and offered the sailors of it.
The statements of Gomes and Baptista were released this Friday by the Supreme Court along with those of thirty other people (other witnesses and defendants such as Bolsonaro).
The former president remained silent.
Bolsonaro, who was an Army captain, is accused of attempted violent abolition of the rule of law and criminal association, among other crimes that carry sentences of 23 years in prison.
In addition, and in another case, he is disqualified until 2030 from being an electoral candidate.
The defeat
October 30, 2022.
The presidential elections conclude with a heart-stopping recount.
The far-right president loses re-election by less than two million votes (1.8%).
He falls into a depression, as revealed by his collaborators.
Taking refuge in his residence, he dedicates the two months of the transition of power to plotting a coup d'état.
First meeting
November 1, 2022.
The head of the Army relates, in a long interrogation, that Bolsonaro summons him to Alvorada along with the heads of the other arms, the minister and the attorney general of the Union.
“Those present tell him that there has been no fraud and that it is necessary to recognize the result,” he says to the commissioner who interrogates him.
And he adds that, then, Bolsonaro asks the lawyer “if something can be done against the result.”
He responds that the elections “were legal.”
That afternoon Bolsonaro breaks two days of silence since the scrutiny ended.
He appears without acknowledging his defeat, which he has never admitted, but orders the transition of power to begin.
The intervention lasts two minutes.
Conspiracy
November 12, 2022.
Retired General Walter Braga Netto, defeated candidate for vice president and former Minister of Defense, meets in Brasilia with several high-ranking military officers.
Among those present, Lieutenant Colonel Mauro Cid, the president's private secretary whose confession is the main pillar of the case in the search for the intellectual authors of the Brasilia assault.
The police accuse the conspirators of “discussing strategies for adhering to a military intervention plan that would annul the result of the 2022 presidential elections in addition to ordering the imprisonment of members of the Judiciary.”
Braga Netto remained silent when questioned.
First no and arrest notice
November 14, 2022.
The head of the Air Force declares to the police that the president, who was resigned to the election result, after the presentation of the Legal Vote Institute report “seems to have hope of reversing the result.” .
General Baptista, who declares that he was summoned to five or six coup-oriented meetings, is called back to the presidential palace along with the commanders of the Army and Navy;
Bolsonaro presents the report to them.
The head of the Air Force warns him in one of those meetings that “the Aeronautics will not support any attempt to remain in power after January 1, 2023 [the day Lula took office].
Baptista himself reveals that "in one of the meetings in which President Bolsonaro raises the possibility of attacking the democratic order through some [supposedly legal] instrument provided for in the Constitution, such as a decree guaranteeing the law and the order, state of defense or siege, the Army commander stated that he would have to arrest the president of the republic.”
pressure campaign
November 16, 2022.
A social media campaign begins against military commanders who refuse to join the coup adventure.
Letter from active commanders
November 28, 2022.
The conspirators meet again in Brasilia, this time in a party hall.
Pressure increases on those who disagree with the plans and preparations of the president and his allies.
That day, the “letter to the Army commander from active senior officers of the Brazilian Army” was disseminated among the military, in which it was stated that “cowardice and injustice are the epithets most detested by real soldiers.”
General Gomes Freire tells the police that he does not know who wrote it.
He orders the opening of an investigation.
Draft decree
December 7, 2022.
Bolsonaro receives the Minister of Defense, General Paulo Sérgio Nogueira, and the heads of the Army and Navy, Admiral Garnier, in the library of the Alvorada Palace.
The acting president presents them with a draft coup decree that orders a military intervention, under the guise of an operation to guarantee law and order, invoking the need to “ensure the necessary restoration of the democratic rule of law, playing in a unconditionally within the four lines of the Constitution.”
This last expression is Bolsonaro's mantra in his bravado and threats.
One of the draft decrees was found in the home of his Minister of Justice.
The generals used to be summoned to these meetings by the minister on behalf of the president, always at the last minute and without an agenda.
The head of the Army remembers that in another meeting they were presented with a different draft decree and that both he and his colleague from the Aeronautics reiterated that this had no legal basis while "as far as he remembers, Admiral Garnier [of the Navy] placed at the disposal of the president.”
He also recounts his discomfort at learning that one of his subordinates, General Estevam Theophilo, has visited the presidential residence without his knowledge.
Theophilo has a crucial position for the presidential plans, he is the commander in charge of coordinating the use of the ground troops.
The deputy and illegality
December 8, 2022.
General Baptista, head of the Air Force, is questioned privately by deputy Carla Zambelli, Bolsonaro's faithful squire.
The deputy who on election day chased an alleged Lula follower with gun in hand.
Both attend an officer graduation in Pirassununga (São Paulo).
“
Brigadeiro
[aircraft general], the gentleman cannot abandon President Bolsonaro.”
To which he replies: “Deputy, I understand what he is talking about and I do not accept that the lady proposes any type of illegality.”
The crossroads
December 9, 2022.
President Bolsonaro addresses his followers, for the first time since his defeat, from his residence and appeals, as so many times, to the people: “We live at a crossroads.
A destiny that the people have to assume.
The one who decides my future, where I am going, is you.
You are the one who decides where the Armed Forces go!
Another draft in the ministry
December 14, 2022.
The minister announces to the military leadership that he wants to present them with another draft decree.
General Baptista, of the Air Force, asks him: does that document foresee the non-assumption of office by the new elected president?
The minister-general is silent.
Baptista says that he does not accept or receive the document and leaves the room.
The draft remains on the table.
The campaign against the air general intensifies on social networks, they accuse him of being a “traitor to the country.”
His Army colleague, Gomes Freire, declared to the police “that he makes it clear to the president and the minister that the Army will not accept any act of constitutional rupture.”
He also says that he warns Bolsonaro that there is nothing to be done regarding the elections and that any step in line with the proposals “can lead to criminal responsibilities for the then president.”
A stunned retired minister-general
December 16, 2022.
The head of the Aeronautics coincides with retired General Augusto Heleno, acting Minister of Institutional Security, at a military ceremony in São José dos Campos (São Paulo).
Heleno's grandson graduates.
In the conversation, General Baptista makes it clear to him that neither he nor his troops will embark on any coup adventure — "in any movement of democratic rupture" — and asks him to convey this back to the president.
Heleno is stunned.
They return together to Brasilia on a military plane piloted by Baptista.
The escape
December 30, 2022.
The acting president boards a military flight to the United States.
He settles in Orlando (Florida), in the home of a wrestling professional near Disneyland.
He stays there for three months.
Inauguration
January 1, 2023.
Lula begins his third term as president with a massive party and the presence of foreign leaders at the ceremony.
The left returns to power at the head of a broad coalition that has campaigned in defense of democracy.
Bolsonaro assault
January 8, 2023.
Thousands of Bolsonaro's followers storm the headquarters of the Presidency, Congress and the Supreme Court.
Bolsonaro is one of thirty people investigated as instigators or financiers of the coup attack.
For now, only some of the perpetrators have been tried and convicted.
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