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jair bolsonaro
Brazilian Left Welcomes Trial of Bolsonaro for Alleged Coup Attempt
"If Brazil had tried the crimes of the military dictatorship, it certainly wouldn't be trying another coup attempt now," said one leftist lawmaker. "We can't fix the past, but we can write a new story!"
Mar 27, 2025
Brazilian leftists including President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva hailed Wednesday's unanimous ruling by a panel of the Federal Supreme Court compelling former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro and seven associates to stand trial for alleged crimes including an attempted coup d'état following his loss to Lula in the 2022 presidential election.
The panel voted 5-0 to accept a complaint filed by the office of Brazilian Attorney General Jorge Messias to indict Bolsonaro, former Brazilian Intelligence Agency Director Alexandre Ramagem, former Navy Commander Almir Garnier, former Justice Minister Anderson Torres, former Institutional Security Bureau Minister Augusto Heleno, former presidential aide Mauro Cid, former Defense Minister Paulo Sérgio Nogueira, and former Defense Minister and presidential Chief of Staff Walter Braga Netto.
Bolsonaro will stand trial for allegedly attempting a coup, involvement in an armed criminal organization, attempted violent abolition of the democratic rule of law, violent damage of state property, and other charges. A coup conviction carries a sentence of up to 12 years' imprisonment under Brazilian law. However, if convicted on all counts, Bolsonaro and his co-defendants could face decades behind bars.
"It's clear that the former president tried to stage a coup."
The eight defendants are accused of being the "crucial core" of a plan to overturn the results of the 2022 election, which Lula narrowly won in a runoff. Like U.S. President Donald Trump in 2020, Bolsonaro and many of his supporters falsely claimed the contest was "stolen" by the opposition. And like in the U.S., those claims fueled mob attacks on government buildings. Around 1,500 Bolsonaro supporters were arrested in the days following the storming of Congress and the presidential offices.
In February, Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet indicted Bolsonaro and 33 others for their alleged roles in a plot to overturn the election that included poisoning Lula and also assassinating Vice President Geraldo Alckmin and Supreme Court Justice Alexadre de Moraes, one of the five judges on the panel that issued Wednesday's ruling.
"It's clear that the former president tried to stage a coup," Lula, who is on a four-day state visit to Japan, said in response to the high court's decision. "It is clear from all the evidence that he tried to contribute to my assassination, assassination of the vice president, assassination of the former president of the Brazilian Electoral Court, and everybody knows what happened."
Lula said that Bolsonaro "knows what he did... and he knows that it was not right," adding that "he should prove his innocence... and he will go free."
"Now, he has no way of proving that he is innocent, since he has no way of proving that he did not attempt the coup," Lula added. "I just hope the justice system will do justice."
The former president is already banned from running for any office until 2030 due to his abuse of power related to baseless claims of electoral fraud.
Bolsonaro and his supporters have been pushing for amnesty, an effort Lula recently said "means he's basically saying, 'Guys, I'm guilty.'"
Erika Hilton, a member of the Chamber of Deputies—the lower house of Brazil's Congress—representing Rio de Janeiro in the Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL), said Thursday on social media, "NO AMNESTY FOR COUP PLOTTERS!"
"We cannot allow these people to be acquitted," Hilton stressed. "This is because the Bolsonarists in Congress want to pardon them, just as the coup plotters of 1964 were pardoned. And Brazil cannot make that mistake again."
Hilton was referring to the U.S.-backed coup that overthrew the democratically elected leftist government of President João Goulart and installed 21 years of military rule characterized by forced disappearances, torture—sometimes taught by U.S. operatives—and extrajudicial murder of at least hundreds of people.
Former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, who is a member of Lula's Workers' Party (PT), was tortured by the regime. Bolsonaro, an army officer during the dictatorship, has prasied the military regime while taunting its victims and lauding one of its leading torturers as a "national hero."
Other leftist lawmakers and observers invoked the dictatorship in urging the government to deliver justice to Bolsonaro and his alleged accomplices.
"If Brazil had tried the crimes of the military dictatorship, it certainly wouldn't be trying another coup attempt now," argued Helder Salomão, a PT deputy from Espírito Santo. "It's also true that people like Bolsonaro wouldn't go this far. We can't fix the past, but we can write a new story!"
Ricardo Pereira, a professor and journalist, said on social media that "a despicable figure" like Bolsonaro would not have risen to power had Brazil tried dictatorship-era criminals, adding that "we are belatedly cleaning up history, but at least we are doing this."
Addressing reports that Bolsonaro may attempt to flee to Argentina—which is ruled by right-wing President Javier Milei—or the United States, where he applied for a visa amid his mounting legal troubles in 2023, Ivan Valente, a PSOL deputy representing São Paulo, said: "Thinking about escaping? It won't work, fugitive, you'll get jailed!"
A date for Bolsonaro's trial has not yet been set. The chair of the Supreme Court panel is expected to issue a legal framework within days.
"Then, [Moraes] prepares a report and requests a trial date," Eloísa Machado, a law professor at the Fundacão Getulio Vargas University in São Paulo, told The Associated Press on Wednesday. "After this stage, prosecutors and defense attorneys will present their final arguments before the court rules on whether to acquit or convict."
Responding to Wednesday's ruling, Bolsonaro told the Supreme Court justices, "If I go to jail, I will give you a lot of work."
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Trump Company Sues Brazilian Judge Leading Probe Into Bolsonaro's Alleged Coup
"This lawsuit is about pressuring him to let Bolsonaro off the hook," said one political scientist.
Feb 19, 2025
In a move that one political scientist said appeared aimed at "promoting autocracy globally," U.S. President Donald Trump's media company sued a Supreme Court justice in Brazil Tuesday just as the judge was considering whether to order the arrest of former right-wing Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro—a close ally of Trump.
The Trump Media and Technology Group, which runs the president's Truth Social platform, filed a lawsuit against Justice Alexandre de Moraes in a U.S. court in Tampa, Florida.
Along with the social media site Rumble, the company, in which Trump holds a majority stake, argued that Moraes censored conservative commentators in the U.S. by ordering Rumble to remove accounts of high-profile supporters of Bolsonaro.
Moraes last year ordered the suspensions of hundreds of social media accounts that he argued promoted the anti-democratic actions of the former Brazilian president and his supporters.
The judge ordered the confiscation of Bolsonaro's passport and the arrests of his allies as the government investigated a plot to stage a coup after the former president's 2022 election loss. Similar to the January 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol after Trump urged his supporters to try to stop lawmakers from certifying the 2020 election results, a mob of Bolsonaro supporters stormed the Brazilian Supreme Court and other government buildings in January 2023.
On Tuesday, hours before Trump's company filed its lawsuit, Moraes received an indictment of Bolsonaro in which prosecutors accused the former president of plotting to assassinate the judge in order to retain power.
Bolsonaro has also been accused of orchestrating a plot to kill his successor and political rival, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The former president has denied involvement in the coup attempt and assassination plot.
With the indictment received by the Supreme Court, Moraes is expected to weigh whether Bolsonaro poses a flight risk and should be arrested and detained until his trial.
But Trump appeared intent on pressuring the judge out of seeking the arrest of his ally.
Kevin Pallister, author of the book Elections in Latin America: Campaigns, Voters, and Institutions, said Moraes "has gone too far in censoring online content in Brazil. But this lawsuit is about pressuring him to let Bolsonaro off the hook."
Trump's company argued in its lawsuit that Moraes' "gag orders" demanding the removal of prominent pro-Bolsonaro accounts from Rumble "enforce a universal ban on the targeted accounts—imposing a total blackout that extends even to U.S. users."
The LGBTQ+ rights advocacy group Truth Wins Out said Trump's fight against the censorship of right-wing voices on social media displays "astounding" hypocrisy considering his purge of "all dissent" in the ranks of the federal government in recent weeks.
The lawsuit comes a month after Bolsonaro expressed hope in a New York Times interview that Trump's reentry into the White House could have a positive impact on his legal battles in Brazil.
"I'm not going to try to give Trump any tips, ever," he told the newspaper. "But I hope his politics really spill over into Brazil."
Moraes has also come into conflict with Elon Musk, the tech mogul who has been designated a "special government employee" as the head of Trump's Department of Government Efficiency, overseeing the takeover of numerous federal agency and seizure of troves of confidential data.
Musk backed down last year from his refusal to comply with Moraes' order to suspend accounts that the judge said attacked Brazil's democratic institutions.
The billionaire has repeatedly called for Moraes to be jailed and insulted him in social media posts in response to the judge's orders.
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Oligarchs and Strongmen: the Difference and Why It Matters
Trump is both a master oligarch and a strongman; his ruthlessness and that of other oligarchs in his orbit reflect in part a self-confidence founded on their wealth.
Jan 26, 2025
Since we published The Oligarchs’ Grip: Fusing Wealth and Power in 2023, the question we get asked most often is: What’s the difference between an oligarch and a strongman? Instead of strongmen, some interlocutors use adjacent words like autocrat, authoritarian, dictator, or tyrant. That question is of great relevance now that Donald Trump has become the 47th U.S. president.
In part, the question reflects confusion about what an oligarch is. To paraphrase Aristotle, oligarchs are the wealthy few who govern us. Or, to put it slightly more formally, oligarchs secure and reproduce wealth and power, then use one to acquire the other. The key word in these definitions is wealth.
Oligarchs acquire their wealth in three ways. They can be self-made through entrepreneurial ventures, such as Elon Musk. They can inherit their wealth, such as Tung Chee-hwa did. Or they can use their connections to generate wealth. Vladimir Putin is a good example. Trump’s wealth came from all three sources.
All of these oligarchs have options, no matter how things work out for them. Their wealth is the ultimate insurance policy.
Oligarchs also possess three types of power. The power generated from holding a decision-making role, such as head of state or government. The power to set agendas through media ownership or political campaign contributions. Or the power to shape the way we think and act, as Google has done so effectively. Trump’s power comes from all three types.
Strongmen focus on the consolidation and centralization of decision-making power. They have little or no accountability. They control key institutions such as the legislature, judiciary, military, and the media. They suppress dissent. They often rely on a personality cult. They also seek to remain in power for long periods. Note the key word here: power.
Simply put, oligarchs have two mechanisms of control: wealth and power. Strongmen have only one: power. And this matters a lot in the era of growing uncertainty in which we live. Think of it this way. Oligarchs have diversified their resources across two control mechanisms, much as we diversify our investment portfolios. If one resource becomes diminished, oligarchs can fall back on the other.
Thaksin Shinawatra is a good example of why this matters. Deposed as Thailand’s prime minister in a 2005 military coup, Thaksin had sufficient wealth to flee the country and comfortably re-establish himself in exile in Dubai. From there, he continued to help set Thailand’s political agenda, and, after returning this year, caused a change in government favorable to his political party.
Oligarchs and strongmen are different categories of economic and political actors. But the lines between these categories are not always sharp. One way to understand this better is by dividing oligarchs and strongmen into three different categories. We identified 40 oligarchs and strongmen over the period from the 1930s to the present and categorized them this way:
Oligarchs Who Are Strongmen | Oligarchs Who Are Not Strongmen | Strongmen Who Are Not Oligarchs |
Idi Amin | Mohammed bin Laden | Abiy Ahmed |
Mohamed Siad Barre | Isabel Dos Santos | |
Silvio Berlusconi | Mikhail Fridman | Rodrigo Duterte |
Nayib Bukele | Al Gore | Boris Johnson |
Alejandro Char | Rafic Hariri | Jaroslaw Kaczynski |
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan | Charles Koch | Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) |
Francisco Franco Bahamonde | Larry Page | Narendra Modi |
Muammar Gaddafi | Sebastian Piñera | Benito Mussolini |
Adolf Hitler | Cyril Ramaphosa | Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu |
Saddam Hussein | Thaksin Shinawatra | Augusto Pinochet Ugarte |
Mobutu Sese Seko | Tung Chee-hwa | |
Elon Musk | Yulia Tymoshenko | |
Victor Orbán | Asif Ali Zardari | |
Vladimir Putin | ||
Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) | ||
Donald Trump | ||
Xi Jinping |
As depicted in the first column, in 42% of these cases, oligarchs are also strongmen, consolidating power and growing more wealthy in sequence or sometimes at the same time. Silvio Berlusconi was an oligarch before becoming Italy’s prime minister three times, using his media ownership to reshape public opinion. Once in office, as Ruth Ben-Ghiat notes, he projected a nationalist cult of virility and mainstreamed the far-right. All while maintaining and growing his wealth. He admired other oligarchs who were strongmen, such as Vladimir Putin.
But, as shown in column two, 32% of the cases involve oligarchs who are NOT strongmen. In some instances, they’re not strongmen, because they don't hold the decision-making power needed to become strongmen. For example, Larry Page and Charles Koch, who have substantial ideological and agenda-setting power, respectively, haven’t served in political office and thus lack the decision-making power needed to become strongmen. Other oligarchs in this category have held decision-making positions, but were constrained from becoming strongmen by their country’s constitutional orders. Rafic Hariri served two terms in office as Lebanon’s prime minister, and his power was limited by its confessional system of political power distribution.
As shown in the third column, 28% of the cases we examined are strongmen who are not oligarchs. They lack the wealth to become one. In some instances, they may not care. For example, AMLO is likely to continue as an important figure in Mexican politics after completing his term in office, regardless of whether he has wealth or not. But, for others, wealth could have made a difference. Mussolini must have dreamed of having the wealth to buy himself out of his ignominious death. Bolsonaro must have wished for the wealth that would make his post-presidency more comforable. Strongmen have incentives to become oligarchs.
Why does the distinction between oligarchs and strongmen matter? We can see why in the new Trump regime that is emerging in the United States. Trump is both a master oligarch and a strongman. His ruthlessness and that of other oligarchs in his orbit reflect in part a self-confidence founded on their wealth. Elon Musk, currently the world’s wealthiest person, with a net worth we estimate at $440 billion by Forbes, is one of the most powerful people in Trumpworld now. Timothy Mellon, whose family is worth $14.1 billion, is one of the top contributors to Trump’s campaign. Peter Thiel, worth $15.5 billion, is JD Vance’s benefactor. And of course Trump, worth $6.3B. This is just a partial list.
All of these oligarchs have options, no matter how things work out for them. Their wealth is the ultimate insurance policy. In an uncertain world, two control mechanisms—wealth and power—are always better than one.
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