A Very Serious Place

Here is an English translation of the statement Flávio Bolsonaro just released: I address the Brazilian people and the international community as the true president-elect of Brazil. First of all, I would like to thank President Milei for his courage, sense of justice and respect for the law, and President Trump and the wonderful American people for welcoming me. This is a land of liberty and of brothers who share the same values as the good people of my country. President Trump is a great defender of freedom of expression. On Sunday night, I watched in horror as electoral fraud unfolded before my eyes. The illegitimate and illegal actions of Lula’s former lawyer allowed a mathematical impossibility to become reality, with Lula gaining more than 10 million votes between the first and second rounds. A ruling by the Federal Supreme Court (STF), overriding the jurisdiction of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), extended voting at the last minute, and the order arrived only after the legal closing time, when the polls had already closed. Voters were subjected to different rules. So far, the TSE has confined itself to defending the extension of voting hours, without providing even a single credible answer. And these procedural violations are not the only problem. Throughout the campaign, there were abuses of political and economic power and use of the state apparatus in support of reelection. These are serious acts, expressly prohibited by law, that justify annulling the election of the Lula–Alckmin ticket. The regime’s response to my challenge came swiftly. As if following a prearranged plan, seven minutes after this repugnant electoral fraud, the judge set the regime’s machinery of political persecution in motion. This judge is implicated in an enormous corruption scandal and directly named in the investigation he used to try to seize my passports. He would very likely be in prison had they not prevented me from taking office. He was legally disqualified from the outset and clearly lacks the impartiality required to initiate any judicial proceedings against me. His mere participation in the proceedings reveals the extent of the arbitrary and unlawful conduct underway. It was not my intention to leave my homeland, but I know exactly where this is heading. This is the classic playbook for a coup d’état. The political persecution that began with my father, former president Jair Bolsonaro, and spread to thousands of other ordinary, patriotic Brazilians and even American citizens has a single objective: to silence anyone who disagrees with the regime operating outside the rule of law that has been established in Brazil through a Supreme Court captured by the Workers’ Party criminal organization. To be clear, there is no arrest warrant against me, because I have committed no crime. What exists is a politically motivated witch hunt intended to make me a hostage and a target of blackmail to protect the corrupt Supreme Court justices from impeachment. Here is the persecution playbook: passport confiscation, an electronic ankle monitor, censorship, house arrest, a sham trial and, finally, a politically motivated conviction. I will not subject my family to this, and my country does not deserve to suffer this international humiliation again. Faced with the political weaponization of Brazil’s justice system, I brought my family to the United States, where we are safe. Once again, I thank President Trump and the American government for welcoming us and giving us the legal protections we no longer have in Brazil. I want to be clear: I did not flee Brazil; I left for Brazil’s sake. I left a regime operating outside the rule of law so I could be the leader my people deserve. Silenced, imprisoned and censored, as my father is, I could not provide that leadership, and we would be left at the mercy of the institutional theater of an emasculated opposition controlled by a Supreme Court full of the regime’s lackeys.