Top military leaders reported the plan to police and said they would arrest Bolsonaro if it went ahead, the documents show.
Brazil's top military leaders have alleged that former President Jair Bolsonaro presented them with a plan to overturn the results of the 2022 presidential election, according to court documents.
The documents, released on Friday, offer some of the first evidence that Bolsonaro was directly involved in an effort to subvert the vote, which he narrowly lost to leftist candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
The documents contain testimonies from former commanders of the country's army and air force, who said they refused to accept the right-wing president's plan.
Instead, they alleged that they warned Bolsonaro that any attempt to overturn the election results could lead to his arrest.
The allegations come as part of several investigations Bolsonaro faces before Brazil's Supreme Court, including an investigation seeking to determine his involvement in a 2023 attack on key government buildings shortly after Lula's inauguration.
Friday's court documents contain a federal police report, in which former army commander Marco Antonio Freire Gomes described that Bolsonaro held several unscheduled meetings at the presidential palace after the second round of elections in 2022.
Gomes told federal police that, in one of the meetings, Bolsonaro told his three army commanders, as well as then-Defense Secretary Paulo Sergio Nogueira, that he wanted to create a commission to “investigate the confirmation and legality of the elections”. process”.
He added that other tools could be used to analyze the elections, including a decree establishing a state of siege. Gomes said he repeatedly told Bolsonaro that “under the conditions of that moment, there was no possibility of reversing the election result from a military point of view.”
Former Air Force commander Brigadier Carlos de Almeida Baptista Junior also told federal police that he rejected Bolsonaro's efforts. He said he believed Gomes' reprimand was key to stopping Bolsonaro from trying to overturn the election results.
“General Freire Gomes said that if such a measure were attempted, he would have to arrest the president,” the court documents read.
Confiscated passport
The release came as prosecutors continued to investigate whether Bolsonaro and his inner circle attempted to overturn the election through a military coup. In February, police confiscated Bolsonaro's passport amid a series of raids.
At the time, a court order from Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes said Bolsonaro had received a draft decree in November 2022, prepared by his assistants, that would have annulled the election results.
He also reportedly issued arrest warrants against Moraes, as well as against Supreme Court Judge Gilmar Mendes and Senate leader Rodrigo Pacheco.
The court order said Bolsonaro had requested some changes to the draft decree, but his edited version continued to call for Moraes' arrest and a new presidential election.
Bolsonaro has already been declared ineligible to run for office until 2030 after Brazil's Superior Electoral Court found in June that he had spread false claims about the election and misappropriated public funds to do so.
Investigators also continue to look for links between Bolsonaro and the riots of January 8, 2023, which vandalized government buildings in the capital, Brasilia.
Bolsonaro refused to publicly admit defeat following his election loss, and he and his allies have suggested the result was the result of electoral fraud.
