A broken window and the Brazilian flag at the Planalto Palace, the presidential office in Brasília, the day after the January 8, 2023, attacks. Image by Marcelo Camargo/Agência Brasil. Fair use.

September 11, 2025 now marks a historical date in Brazil. A former president, five military officers and two other top government members were convicted for plotting and attempting a coup d'état to abolish the rule of law, after losing the 2022 national elections. The Supreme Court decision is a first in a country with a long history of granting amnesty for coups and coup attempts, including for human rights violators during the military dictatorship era.

In her vote, Justice Cármen Lúcia Antunes Rocha, the only woman among the judges at the Supreme Court, stated this case “pulses a Brazil that hurts [her], and it is almost an encounter between Brazil with its past, its present and its future.” The country’s return to democracy reached its 40th anniversary this year.

The eight defendants were sentenced with the majority of votes — four out of five judges — finding them guilty. Their sentences vary from 27 years (former president, Jair Bolsonaro, identified as the leader) to two years in prison (Mauro Cid, his aide, a military officer who made a deal and denounced others). They can still appeal.

Except for Judge Luiz Fux, who voted to absolve Bolsonaro, contradicting his own previous rulings convicting civilians for the January 8 attacks, the others followed the understanding by Judge Alexandre de Moraes, the rapporteur and justice turned into a foe by Bolsonaro since he started to investigate fake news networks and the “hate cabinet” behind them, in 2019.

Moraes argued that Bolsonaro had been plotting a coup since mid-2021, when he escalated the tone of his speeches against the electoral system and judicial decisions, feeding his followers a script. This ultimately led to a mob storming the Three Powers buildings in the federal capital on January 8, 2023, a week after Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s inauguration. The plan would be to cause social chaos, justifying a military intervention, signed by Lula himself. Eventually, it would lead to bringing Bolsonaro back to the presidency. They also drew a plan to assassinate Moraes, Lula and vice president Geraldo Alckmin.

Moraes’ vote and final report was based on photos, videos, text messages, documents (both printed and handwritten), and testimonies gathered by the investigation, which included a 2022 meeting between Bolsonaro and his top government officials. The recording was found on Cid’s computer. Defense attorneys complained about the volume of evidence for them to go through in just a few months: 70 terabytes.

‘Arrested, dead or with the victory’

Bolsonaro talks to the press the day the Supreme Court accepted charges against him, in March 2025. Photo by Lula Marques/Agência Brasil. Fair use.

In an event with evangelical leaders in 2021, Bolsonaro declared that he saw only three alternatives for his future: “being arrested, dying or obtaining the victory.” “Be sure that the first alternative does not exist,” he said. At that time, he was being investigated in five separate inquiries.

Bolsonaro became a politician after being tried under military justice for revealing in an interview a plan to plant bombs in military units as a way of pressuring the armed forces for better salaries. Veja magazine published a hand-drawn sketch of the plan, although forensic experts were unable to conclude its authorship. He left the army right after, maintaining his military ranking, and was elected city councilor in Rio de Janeiro.

Two years later, Bolsonaro moved to a seat as a federal deputy in the National Congress, where he stayed for 27 years, seven terms and eight political parties. At the Lower Chamber, he became known as a politician representing the military class interests and for controversial declarations, such as voting in favor of then-President Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment, a woman who had been tortured and imprisoned, in honor of the first military officer recognized as a torturer by the Brazilian justice system: Brilhante Ustra.

In a television interview in 1999, he said he was in favour of torture and that if ever elected president, he would close Congress and kill more than the dictatorship did, starting with then-President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who went into exile after the 1964 coup.

Através do voto você não vai mudar nada nesse país, nada, absolutamente nada! Só vai mudar, infelizmente, no dia em que partir para uma guerra civil aqui dentro, e fazendo o trabalho que o regime militar não fez. Matando uns 30 mil, começando pelo FHC, não deixar ele pra fora não, matando! Se vai morrer alguns inocentes, tudo bem, tudo quanto é guerra morre inocente.

Through voting nothing will change in this country, absolutely nothing! It will only change, unfortunately, the day we move to a civil war here and do the work that the military regime didn’t do. Killing 30,000 people, starting with FHC, we can’t spare him! If some innocent people also die, that is okay, in every war there are innocents dying.

Although he tried to polish this speech later in life, in his first year as president, he celebrated the date marking the 1964 coup.

The law under which he was sentenced — the Law of Crimes Against Democracy — was signed by Bolsonaro himself in 2021 as a substitute for the National Security Law. According to the BBC, it was the result of a political defeat the then-president suffered during the COVID-19 pandemic — Brazil had an estimated 700,000 deaths due to coronavirus.

Bolsonaro is already ineligible to run for office for eight years, after the Electoral Court ruled against him for abusing his political power as president and broadcasting a meeting with foreign ambassadors on TV, during which he attacked the electoral system without providing proof. If maintained, this latest sentence extends his ineligibility.

Justice statue in front of the Supreme Court, one of the buildings attacked. A protestor used a lipstick to write ‘You lost, moron,’ paraphrasing a judge’s response to Bolsonaro supporters who were protesting against him. Photo by Jodeson Alves/Agência Brasil. Fair use

U.S. backing 

When Lula was elected in 2022, the Joe Biden administration rushed to acknowledge the transparency of the Brazilian electoral process and avoid trouble coming from the  then the sitting president, who had been trying to cast doubts on electronic ballots without ever presenting any evidence of wrongdoing. Months before the elections, the information American officials were getting worried them, according to a story on The Economist.

With Trump’s return to the White House this year, however, there was a shift. For many, the U.S. president mirrors Bolsonaro’s role with the attack at the U.S. Capitol in 2021. Unlike his Brazilian counterpart, Trump wasn’t tried for it.

Eduardo, a federal deputy and one of four Bolsonaro sons in politics, moved to the U.S. in February, where he started to work more closely with officials to arrange sanctions and create political pressure on the Brazilian government to grant amnesty to his father. He works with Paulo Figueiredo, grandson of the last president of the military regime.

Connected to Steve Bannon, the MAGA guru, Eduardo succeeded in having Justice Alexandre de Moraes sanctioned with the Magnitsky Act, a global sanction law reserved for human rights violators, to suspend visas of eight Supreme Court justices and to intervene in meetings between the two federal governments to discuss Trump’s tariffs for Brazilian products.

“I work so they cannot find dialogue [with the White House],” he said to TV channel SBT News. After being sent money by his father, Eduardo is now under investigation, suspected of coercing authorities working on the case against Bolsonaro, through U.S. sanctions threats. He also declared he wants to run for president next year.

After confirmation of the sentencing of Jair Bolsonaro, Secretary Marco Rubio posted on X (formerly Twitter):

The political persecutions by sanctioned human rights abuser Alexandre de Moraes continue, as he and others on Brazil’s supreme court have unjustly ruled to imprison former President Jair Bolsonaro.

The United States will respond accordingly to this witch hunt.

— Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) September 11, 2025

Brazil’s Foreign Relations Ministry responded, also on X:

Threats like the one made today by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in a statement that attacks a Brazilian authority and ignores the facts and the compelling evidence on record, will not intimidate our democracy.

— Itamaraty Brazil 🇧🇷 (@Itamaraty_EN) September 11, 2025

Meanwhile, unrest continues. Last November, a man using homemade explosives killed himself in front of Brazil’s Supreme Court. During the trial week, a 50-year-old man tried to break into the Planalto Palace, where the presidential office is, overnight. After the news of Bolsonaro’s conviction, “bolsonaristas” started a vigil in front of the gated private community where he lives in Brasília.

Since August 4, Bolsonaro has been in house arrest for failing to comply with legal decisions on precautionary measures, having videos and messages from him shared on his son's social media, instigating attacks on the Supreme Court and supporting foreign intervention in the country, according to the court.