Flavio Bolsonaro Claims Brazil Leadership From Miami After Losing Election
The defeated senator left Brazil despite a court order and now rejects Lula’s election win. Electoral authorities say the vote was lawful.
SAO PAULO, Oct 28 – Flavio Bolsonaro declared himself Brazil’s rightful leader on Wednesday after arriving in the United States, days after losing Sunday’s presidential runoff to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. The right-wing senator accused the Supreme Court and Lula of carrying out what he called an electoral coup.
He offered no evidence to support the claim. Bolsonaro landed in Miami with his wife and daughters, and Brazilian media reported that the family had crossed into Argentina by car before taking a private jet to Florida.
The trip came after he refused to comply with a Supreme Court order requiring him to surrender his passports, deepening the standoff between Bolsonaro and Brazil’s judiciary. His departure has drawn sharp criticism from government officials and allies of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who argue that it undermines his claims of innocence and raises questions about whether he intends to return to face the legal proceedings against him.
Justice Alexandre de Moraes issued that order, and police served it on Monday. It’s linked to a money-laundering investigation, and Bolsonaro denies any wrongdoing. He said officers told him about the order as he left his father’s home.
In an open letter posted on X, Bolsonaro thanked Argentine President Javier Milei for helping him make the journey. He also thanked United States President Donald Trump, whose government granted entry visas to him and his family.
The first version of the letter referred to him as the elected president of Brazil. That version was deleted. A new one described him instead as the country’s rightful leader. In it, he said the people who took the election belonged to a criminal group that had set up a tyranny.
Bolsonaro also rejected claims that he had fled the country, saying he left to protect himself and his family from what he described as a witch hunt by Lula and the courts.
“I did not flee Brazil,” Bolsonaro said.
Lula won the October 25 runoff with about 51.8 percent of the valid votes. Flavio Bolsonaro took about 48.2 percent. The gap was roughly 4.5 million votes. That reversed the first round on October 4, when Bolsonaro finished ahead.
Brazil’s federal electoral court has recognized Lula’s victory. So have world leaders, international observers and Bolsonaro’s own Liberal Party. Kassio Nunes Marques, who heads the electoral authority, said the vote fully met legal and constitutional requirements. His statement did not mention Bolsonaro’s letter.
The dispute centers on a late decision on election day. Supreme Court Justice Cristiano Zanin, a Lula appointee and his former personal lawyer, extended voting by two hours. The move followed complaints from Lula’s campaign of voter suppression and transport problems in left-leaning northeastern states.
But Bolsonaro’s campaign had also asked for more time. It cited heavy rain in conservative southern states.
Nunes Marques said earlier this week that the extension slowed the count but didn’t change the final result. And the numbers involved were small. Fewer than 35,000 votes were cast in the extra two hours, or about 0.03 percent of the total, according to an analysis by Insper professor Pedro Burgos.
Analysts say Bolsonaro’s bid to annul the election has little chance of success, but the declaration has nonetheless created a fresh complication for Washington. The United States is trying to manage an increasingly tense rift with Brazil, Latin America’s largest country and home to the world’s second-largest reserves of rare earths, minerals that are critical to technologies ranging from electric vehicles and wind turbines to military systems.
The disagreement is likely to hinder cooperative initiatives in trade, investment, and access to critical natural resources at a time when both countries are seeking to reduce their reliance on China. Their efforts to do so are already creating tensions. It also risks deepening political divisions in Brazil, where Bolsonaro’s allies have seized on his claims to challenge the legitimacy of the election result, even as courts and electoral authorities have repeatedly rejected those arguments.
Lula has accused Washington of working with the Bolsonaro family to help return them to power. Before the vote, media reports described a State Department effort to restore the Bolsonaros to office. Washington denies meddling in Brazil’s internal affairs.
Trump was asked about Bolsonaro’s comments at Joint Base Andrews but declined to respond directly, instead repeating his earlier characterization of the Brazilian election as “very strange.” He has also previously said that Flavio’s father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, was the victim of judicial persecution.
The elder Bolsonaro traveled to the United States after refusing to concede defeat to Lula in 2022, before later returning to Brazil. He was subsequently sentenced to 27 years in prison for plotting a coup, following the storming of government buildings in Brasília by his supporters.
Lula said this week that it was “shameful” that Flavio Bolsonaro had not remained in Brazil to prove his innocence. The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and neither did Lula’s office or Brazil’s Supreme Court.
