Bolsonaro remains silent under questioning over coup plan

Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro refused to answer questions asked this Thursday by federal police inspectors investigating his alleged involvement in a coup plan to keep him in power after Lula da Silva’s defeat in the 2022 presidential elections. The information was provided to the press by one of the lawyers accompanying Bolsonaro, Fabio Weingarten.

According to Weingartem, Jair Bolsonaro remained completely silent on the advice of his lawyers and did not agree to answer even the simplest questions that would not incriminate him, on the grounds that the police did not provide full and unrestricted access to the investigation. Given the former governor’s refusal to answer anything, federal police allowed him to leave corporate headquarters approximately 20 minutes after the interrogation began.

Bolsonaro did everything throughout the week to try not to attend the interrogation, asked to postpone it to Monday and Tuesday and, faced with the court’s refusal to postpone the testimony both times, on Wednesday informed the judge in the case, Alexander de Moraes, who was told that he would to remain silent and again asked to fire him. Moraes, rapporteur in several cases against Bolsonaro in the Federal Supreme Court, further rejected this request and made it clear that the former president could even remain silent, a guarantee given by law, but he was obliged to appear.

In addition to Jair Bolsonaro, this Thursday the federal police also summoned 13 other people to testify, including several generals, an admiral, former ministers and his former advisers. The feds placed each suspect in a separate room and began all interviews at the same time to prevent those being questioned from combining leads and trying to find contradictions, but apparently by pre-agreed agreement between each of their lawyers, most of the suspects called did the same thing. and Bolsonaro, and remained silent.

The investigation, already quite advanced, is examining proposals carried out, according to the Federal Police, by Jair Bolsonaro, high-ranking military officers, ministers and advisers of the then government with the aim of carrying out a coup at the end of 2022 with the aim of keeping the then president ultimately in power, denying the results presidential elections and turning him into a dictator supported by the Armed Forces. However, according to investigators, the coup did not take place because at the last moment the high command of the army, the country’s largest military force, was divided and decided not to join the attempt.

Bolsonaro denied this information, and Fabio Weingarten said this Thursday, leaving the headquarters of the federal police, that the former president never intended to become a dictator and was never sympathetic to the coup d’état. But federal police found a draft expulsion decree in Bolsonaro’s room at the Liberal Party headquarters, have numerous communications from advisers planning an institutional break, and have a recording of a council of ministers meeting in July. 2022, in which the then-president tells his aides that there is a high probability that Lula da Silva will lose the October presidential election, as he did, and calls on everyone to commit to a plan that would allow them to retain power even with that defeat at the ballot box.