Excellent reporting and videos from the NY Times (gift article): Video: Bolsonaro, Facing Investigations, Hid at Hungarian Embassy
As you recall, Jair Bolsarnaro is under indictment for his part in the coup attempt in Brasilia on the January 8, 2023 attacks after he lost the presidency to lefty President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Lula is attempting to halt the deforestation of the Amazon Rainforest after Bolsanaro has burned massive swathes to the ground.
On Feb. 8, Brazil’s federal police confiscated former President Jair Bolsonaro’s passport and arrested a pair of his former aides on accusations that they had plotted a coup after Mr. Bolsonaro lost the 2022 presidential election.
Four days later, Mr. Bolsonaro was at the entrance to the Hungarian Embassy in Brazil, waiting to be let in, according to the embassy’s security-camera footage, which was obtained by The New York Times.
The former president appeared to stay at the embassy for the next two days, the footage showed, accompanied by two security guards and waited on by the Hungarian ambassador and staff members. Mr. Bolsonaro, a target of various criminal investigations, cannot be arrested at a foreign embassy that welcomes him, because they are legally off-limits to domestic authorities.
The stay at the embassy suggests that the former president was seeking to leverage his friendship with a fellow far-right leader, Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, into an attempt to evade the Brazilian justice system as he faces criminal investigations at home.
The link in this post is a gift article to read the story:
The Times researched three days of footage (all at the NY Times link) from the Hungarian Embassy and found that Bolsonaro hid for two nights and two days from February 12th to February 14th, 2024. Bolsonaro has confirmed he was at the embassy.
Bolsonaro calls Orban “brother”. They have been close friends for several years. Additional reporting from the Times found that Hunary’s foreign ministry asked Bolssanaro if there was anything they could do to help with his re-election. Bolsonaro and Orban hooked up in Buenos Aries in December at the inauguration of far-right Javier Milei where Orban called him a “hero”.
Brazil’s legal system has seized his passport and cell phone, searched his home, and arrested former aides and allies.
As of this posting, Jair Bolsonaro has not been arrested. He certainly thought he would be, though.
On March 20, 2024, Bolsanaro was indicted for criminal association and falsifying his Covid vaccination data to obtain a passport. The courts will decide whether to proceed with criminal charges against him.
Bolsonaro used his passport to skip Lula's inauguration and spent New Year’s at Mar-a-Lago instead. In total, he spent at least one month in Florida, where he also underwent abdominal surgery.
After narrowly losing re-election to leftist President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, this past fall, Bolsonaro has largely receded from public life, refusing to officially concede his electoral loss, and punctuating a weeks-long silence with cryptic remarks to his supporters, telling them "who decides where I go are you. Who decides which way the armed forces go are you," in early December.
Now, according to multiple reports across Brazilian media and confirmed by Globo News White House reporter Raquel Krähenbühl, Bolsonaro has begun telling close friends that he will not be in the country to hand over the presidential sash to Lula, and will instead be relaxing at Mar-a-Lago, from which former President Donald Trump has ostensibly been running his 2024 re-election campaign.
Reports of Bolsonaro's decision to spend New Year's in Florida come amid growing concerns that Lula's inauguration is being targeted for terrorist violence, with incoming Justice Minister Flavio Dino announcing plans to bolster security for the event after authorities arrested a man allegedly in the midst of a bomb plot. "We're not talking about a lone wolf," Dino said during a December 26 TV interview. "There are powerful people behind this, and the police will investigate."
Bolsonaro's alleged upcoming Mar-a-Lago stay is not the first time he's sojourned at Trump's Florida estate, nor is it a wholesale surprise. In addition to having been particularly close during their respective administrations due to their shared sense of ultra-nationalism and far-right leanings, Bolsonaro is reportedly being counseled by former Trump administration officials Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon.
Look familiar?