The downfall of Jair Bolsonaro

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:09Today, the downfall of Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil's far-right populist.

0:21A week after the inauguration of Brazil's left-wing president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, A violent mob broke into the presidential palace and ransacked the Supreme Court and the Brazilian Congress.

0:37This was January 2023, almost exactly two years since Trump supporters had stormed the capital. It felt eerily familiar.

0:50The insurrectionists were supporters of Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right populist who'd narrowly lost to Lula in the general election.

1:03Tom Phillips was there. He's The Guardian's Latin America correspondent. I remember on January 9th going into Congress, into the presidential palace and into the Supreme Court to witness those scenes of destruction. Shattered glass everywhere, furniture thrown all over the place, graffiti on the walls. It looked like the scene of a natural disaster, like a tsunami had swept through these buildings. Little did he know then just how close Brazil came to losing its democracy. It was obvious that Brazil's democratic institutions had come under a very severe attack. But what we didn't know as we moved around those broken buildings was that that was the culmination of a plot that had begun a year and a half earlier that involved a massive disinformation campaign, special forces assassins, and some of the most powerful people in Brazilian politics and the armed forces trying to bring down Brazilian democracy 40 years after it was reclaimed following the dictatorship.

2:12Now, Bolsonaro has been sentenced to 27 years in prison. after being found guilty of plotting a military coup and seeking to annihilate the biggest democracy in South America. It's a strange moment because it's simultaneously absolutely the trial of the century. Huge historic significance and democratic significance. But at the same time, I think that's slightly tempered by a realisation amongst Democrats here that even with Bolsonaro in prison, found guilty of trying to stage a coup, this really isn't the end of the story. From The Guardian, I'm Helen Pidd. Today in Focus. How Bolsonaro tried to subvert Brazilian democracy.

3:00Tom, welcome back to Today in Focus. Your voice will be very familiar to OG listeners because you appeared on the very first episode of our show back in 2018 talking about the election of Jair Bolsonaro. Yeah, it's crazy how time passes. I would just listen to a few minutes of that this morning. Seven years on, he's just been sentenced to 27 years in prison for orchestrating a coup to try to remain in power after losing the 2022 general election. And I know it's very complicated, but can you explain for us just how Bolsonaro plotted to stay on as Brazil's president? It is immensely complicated.

3:35Fortunately, I spent five hours, more than five hours, in the Supreme Court listening to Alexandre de Moraes, who's the justice residing over the trial, listening to his version of what happened.

3:51And he describes a 13-stage criminal conspiracy that began halfway through 2021 and ended on the 8th of January, 2023, when thousands of Bolsonaro supporters went on the rampage through Brasilia, smashed the Supreme Court, smashed the presidential palace, invaded Congress, ransacked the offices.

4:17What the judge describes is this massive disinformation campaign leading up to the election in October 2022, by which Brazilian voters were convinced, millions and millions of people, that the coming election was going to be stolen by the left, that they needed to rise up against the Supreme Court, hit the streets to protest that impending electoral fraud, by sowing that seed in the minds of millions of radical right-wing voters, they could eventually, if Bolsonaro lost the election in 2022, justify a power grab, a military coup, an intervention that would stop the rightful winner of the election, the left-wing Luisa Nassio Lula da Silva, President Lula, from taking power and ensure that Bolsonaro could go on governing Brazil.

5:03One of the most stunning political comebacks, ex-Luís Inácio Lula da Silva, has been voted in as Brazil's next president. The former leftist leader took nearly 51 % of the vote. The far-right encumbered Jair Bolsonaro won 49%. Mr Bolsonaro becomes the first sitting president.

5:30After Lula wins the election, there is real elation on the left. Finally, Bolsonaro's four-year government of hostility to minorities, human rights abuses, pro-gun legislation, environmental devastation was over. But simultaneously, we see pro-Boltanaro encampments spring up all across the country, from the Amazon to the Deep South and here in Brasilia, outside the army's headquarters. People explicitly demanding a military intervention.

6:10And then in November and December of 2022, so just before Lula is due to take power on the 1st of January, these various plots accelerate. The most mind-blowingly devious was a plan called Green and Yellow Dagger. And part of that was an operation called Operation World Cup 2022, involving members of the special forces working as assassins and kidnappers and they planned it was alleged to murder or kidnap lula the vice president-elect gerald alckmin and alessandro de moraise the supreme court judge who has become one of the major thorns in the side of the bolsonaro movement wow they had a signal group and the various assassins and kidnappers used code names of different football teams one was Ghana, one was Germany, I think another one was Japan.

7:08And part of their alleged plot involved poisoning Lula with some kind of organic or chemical agent. And the idea was that that would cause social chaos. People would come out onto the streets from both left, of course, to protest the assassination of their leader and the right, and that that social chaos would be used to justify a military operation to quell disorder on the streets of Brazil, and that that would help Bolsonaro cling to power.

7:38Bloody hell. That's a lot, isn't it? It is a lot. Goodness. And at the same time, there are a series of meetings involving Bolsonaro and the very top members of the armed forces here, at which it's alleged Bolsonaro circulated a draft decree which would allow him to declare a state of emergency that would allow him to stay in power. The head of the Navy is alleged to have agreed to use his troops in support of Bolsonaro's coup attempt, whilst the head of the Air Force and Army declined to do so. And is that ultimately why this assassination plot didn't happen? So when the heads of the army and the Air Force declined to join Bolsonaro's scheme in late 2022, and apparently scuppered those plans, the plotters appear to have moved on to what Judge Mordayes described as plan B.

8:31And that meant using all of this pent-up anger over the fake claims of electoral fraud, the claim that Lula had stolen the election somehow, to get huge numbers of bolsonaristas out onto the streets in front of these military encampments. At the beginning of the second week of January, exactly a week after we'd seen Lula be sworn in as president here, they went on the rampage and all hell broke loose.

9:14So there were all of these sinister plots, and it sounds like the case against Bolsonaro is that this all took place with his knowledge and authorisation. It might not have ultimately been fully enacted because, as you say, the army and the air force chiefs didn't want anything to do with it. Only the navy guy, I think, was willing to go along with it. So Lula survives, he's not poisoned. Does he have any idea at that point how close he came to potentially being assassinated? When does it emerge? Who was plotting and what the plots were? So very soon after the start of Lula's administration, January 2023, police started investigating who was bankrolling this apparent attempt to overthrow Brazilian democracy, who was involved, who was leading it, etc.

10:05That investigation leads to, in November last year, an 884-page federal police investigation being published, in which it accused Bolsonaro of masterminding this authoritarian plot to seize power. In March this year, the Supreme Court ruled that there was enough evidence for Bolsonaro to stand trial.

10:33Bolsonaro was interrogated by the court in June, denied wrongdoing, said the idea of a coup would be abominable, although he did admit seeking alternative ways of staying in power. Alternative ways, hmm. Within the Constitution, he always says within the four lines of the Constitution, but I suspect he has a rather flexible understanding of the boundaries of the Constitution.

11:00And that has culminated in eight people, Bolsonaro, and seven co-conspirators on trial for a series of crimes, but the most serious of which are coup d 'etat and a violent attempt to abolish Brazilian democracy. And those people, remarkably, include two former defence ministers, another former minister, those three men, all four-star army generals, and the former navy commander, as well as the head of Brazil's answer to MI6, Bolsonaro's aide, and the former security minister. And how's the trial been viewed in Brazil? Depends on your political point of view. left-wing Brazilians and many centrists and people who are pro-democracy and who remember the trauma, the horrors, the torture of the 64 to 85 military regime, view it as an utterly historic moment.

12:00And then on the other side, on the Bolsonaro side, there's a mix, I think, of fury at what they consider a kangaroo court packed with lefties, one of whom was a minister under Lula and another who was Lula's lawyer. And hardcore Bolsonaroistas believe it is a witch hunt, it is a political execution. And they have been fed on social media for the last few years, this torrent of fake news about electoral fraud, about potential communist takeover of Brazil. And they believe it. And they believe that Bolsonaro is being deliberately eliminated from Brazilian politics as part of a left-wing vendetta.

12:46It's impossible to get that idea out of their heads. And in fact, they actually believe even more preposterously that Brazil is now a judicial dictatorship and that the Supreme Court is now calling the shots. Yeah, because right now the Supreme Court justices are unstoppable. We can't stop them. They're very powerful and I know that they have tentacles all over the world. So it's an international, very powerful game. His only goal is to eliminate Bolsonaro from the 2026 elections. That's the goal from the very beginning. And from what you know about the Brazilian judicial system, can it be trusted?

13:32Because it does sound a bit rum if Bolsonaro was convicted by one Supreme Court judge who used to work for Lula and another, Judge Morais, who was an actual target of the plot. That's two out of the four judges who ultimately voted to convict him. I think when you talk to reasonable experts, they will say, sure, we have some concerns, some criticisms. about the Supreme Court, about some of its rulings. Some people think that rather than having just five of its 11 justices running the trial of Bolsonaro, it should have gone to the whole court. But yes, these are independent institutions. And I think ultimately, the reason that Bolsonaro and his movement have spent the last few years focusing their fire so much on the Supreme Court, and some of its judges in particular, is because they know these are the people who service checks and balances.

14:27These are the people who are the guardrail against the kind of authoritarian takeover. That Bolsonaro, a former army captain who cut his teeth in the military during the dictatorship and spent years defending that period as a sort of a golden era. The reason Bolsonaro has attacked so much the Supreme Court is because he knew that that was what was standing between him and the power he sought in which he could do what he wanted. Tell us a bit more about Alexandre G. Moraes, the judge that Bolsonaro wanted dead, because he's quite a character, isn't he? Yeah, I mean, he's a fascinating character.

15:08He was joking in court when he described one of the plots and he said, oh, they plan to kill the judge. That's me. An extraordinary character. And a fascinating backstory of a Sao Paulo prosecutor who was obviously top of his class at law school in Sao Paulo, then went into politics as a right wing figure, became justice minister under a conservative president here in Brasilia, and was then put on the Supreme Court. And the left absolutely hated him and were appalled when he was nominated to the Supreme Court in 2017. So it's a remarkable turnaround that he has gone from enemy of the left to hero of the left and of pro-democracy Brazilians.

15:52Because he has been one of the main shields protecting Brazilian democracy from this anti-democratic onslaught over the past few years. He was head of the electoral court as well as being on the Supreme Court during the 2022 election. He's seen as the guy who stopped Bolsonaro fulfilling his plan. You know, he apparently fights martial arts, he's got a shaved head, he's a strong guy. He, I think, once posted a picture of himself without his shirt on and became something of a sex symbol amongst progressives and is absolutely despised by Bolsonaro's movement. When you go to their protests now, the main focus of their ire is not Lula, it's Morais.

16:39And how has Bolsonaro acted during all of this period? Bolsonaro completely denies any knowledge of or involvement in this supposed assassination plot. He completely denies inciting the 8th of January riots. And since the beginning of August, he's been under house arrest at his rented mansion here in Brasilia after being accused of violating a Supreme Court order that barred him from using social media. and so he's now in this mansion with a small swimming pool in the back with police guards outside he's wearing an ankle monitor and his voice has disappeared because he's not allowed to tweet he's got millions of followers on social media but he's no longer allowed to do that so his sons and his allies have been speaking on his behalf and his wife michelle bolsonaro who was at a recent rally in sao paulo they are now his spokespeople Bolsonaro, here's a nation that loves you.

17:38Here's a people that loves you. Here's a people that loves you.

18:05And I suspect his lawyers will use that to try and argue that he should be put under house arrest and not sent to a regular prison.

18:23And what has this meant for Lula and for his premiership and his popularity? He's been boosted over the last few months by Donald Trump's astonishing decision to wade into this courtroom drama. So in June, we had Trump announce 50 % tariffs on Brazilian imports, partly in retribution for what he called the witch hunt against his ally. President Bolsonaro is a good man. He loves the people of Brazil. And I believe it's a witch hunt and it shouldn't be happening. I find these terrorists very curious because they don't just punish Lula. They punish every single Brazilian, including Bolsonaro supporters.

19:02It's bewildering because Bolsonaro has always projected his movement as being the great patriotic movement of yellow and green jersey wearing nationalists. So now they are in a very unusual position where instead of using the Brazil flag, which has been their symbol for, you know, to many progressives, they've hijacked the colors of the Brazilian flag. Instead of using that, they're also now using the US flag. And you ask them exactly that question, what about these tariffs? What about the impact on Brazilian lives and Brazilian business? And they say, no, sorry, we need this. This is short term pain.

19:35And this is a line that they're parroting from the Bolsonaro propaganda machine. machine. Short-term pain stopped this communist takeover of Brazil. So yeah, we're behind it. We're behind Trump. But Lula has been able to play this to his advantage. He was not doing particularly well in the polls. It looked like he was going to have a hell of a job in next year's presidential election to get another term. And actually, he's gone up in the polls because he's been able to portray himself as the great defender of Brazilian sovereignty. He started wearing his version of the MAGA cap. It says on it, Brasil é dos Brasileiros.

20:09Brasil belongs to Brazilians.

20:17So finally, last week, the trial reached its conclusion. What happened? It did. It reached its conclusion on Thursday afternoon. And I was sat there in the Supreme Court listening to the fourth of five judges deliver their verdicts. Judges coming in now.

20:39And she began by saying actually thank you to journalists for their work in defense of democracy. And I thought, OK, yeah, this is a done deal now. And then she launched into a very eloquent, moving defense of democracy and democratic institutions.

21:05And then, of course, when she cast her vote, it was to convict Bolsonaro and the other conspirators on all charges.

21:16After that, the final judge voted and again voted to convict. So the result was what I guess our football writers would describe as a 4-1 thrashing of Brazilian democracy over authoritarian populism.

21:34And later that night, the sentences were announced and Bolsonaro received a 27-year and three-month sentence. And all of the others, apart from his former aide who'd struck a plea deal, who got a two-year sentence, dramatically reduced because he'd collaborated with authorities, received sentences from mostly over 20 years. And will he actually go to prison? That is the million dollar question at the moment. His lawyers will push for him to be held under house custody, house arrest. Even with such a big sentence, after about six years, he will have the right to be considered for custody in a minimum security prison and he will benefit potentially from day release.

22:22So realistically, he will not be behind bars for 27 years. But still, you know, there was a great deal of joy and excitement on Thursday night on the streets of Brasilia and with the strength of the sentence.