Last week, Brazil’s federal police unsealed a nearly 900-page document outlining the evidence they collected during an investigation into the actions of then-President Jair Bolsonaro and 36 other people, including several high-ranking military officials, in the aftermath of the country’s presidential election in October 2022. According to the report’s main conclusion, Bolsonaro “planned, acted and was directly and effectively aware of the actions of the criminal organization aiming to launch a coup d’etat and eliminate the democratic rule of law” after he lost that ballot.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who defeated Bolsonaro by about 2 million votes in the second round of the election, was inaugurated on New Year’s Day of 2023. Seven days later, Bolsonaro’s supporters stormed Brazil’s Congress and damaged buildings throughout the capital of Brasilia. That riot—reminiscent of the storming of the U.S. Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump on Jan. 6, 2021—was put down swiftly, and it further reinforced the resolve of Lula and a coalition of leftist and centrist legislators to reject the anti-democratic aspects of Bolsonaro’s movement.
In the nearly two years since Jan. 8, 2023, however, it has become clear that the riot that day was only the visible tip of the iceberg of plots threatening Brazil’s democracy at the time. Bolsonaro, his family and his campaign team worked throughout the election to undermine the credibility of the electoral institutions. After losing, the outgoing president presented an unsigned decree to three top military commanders that would have created a commission to investigate purported electoral fraud based on false evidence that his own party propagated online, with an eye to suspending the country’s electoral authorities and forcing new elections. Going even further, Bolsonaro’s former defense minister and vice presidential running mate, Walter Braga Netto, approved an assassination attempt against Lula, Vice President-elect Geraldo Alckmin and Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes. Clearly if Bolsonaro and his supporters didn’t manage to keep Lula from rightfully assuming the presidency, it wasn’t for lack of trying.