São Paulo, Brazil – Former President Jair Bolsonaro testified to the Federal Police this Wednesday (26), in an investigation about his involvement in the attacks carried out by his supporters on Brazilian government buildings on January 8th.
He was questioned for more than hours at the police headquarters in Brasília.
Bolsonaro became a suspect in this case by order of Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, after sharing a video on his Facebook page on January 10th, in which the state prosecutor of Mato Grosso do Sul, Felipe Gimenez, claimed without evidence that the victory of Lula da Silva in the presidential election had been fraudulent.
In the video, which is no longer available, Gimenez said that Lula had not been elected by the people but chosen by the Brazilian electoral service to govern the country in place of Bolsonaro. The content was removed from the former president’s Facebook channel about three hours after publication.
The post made just two days after the violent attacks in the capital of Brazil raised suspicions that the former president may have been acting in some way to encourage the extreme acts of his supporters.
To Federal Police investigators, Bolsonaro said he posted the video by mistake. According to his lawyers, on the day he shared the post, Jair Bolsonaro was recovering from medical treatment and under the influence of strong medication.
“Coincidentally, during that period, the president was hospitalized in Orlando. Just between January 8th and 10th, he had an obstruction crisis, this is documented, he was treated with morphine, was hospitalized, and only discharged on the afternoon of the 10th,” said lawyer Paulo Cunha Bueno.
According to the lawyers, Bolsonaro became confused with Facebook commands when trying to save the video on his device to evaluate it later and ended up sharing it by mistake, only realizing what he had done after being alerted by his advisors.
Throughout his tenure as President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro accumulated episodes of attacks on the Brazilian electoral process, especially with criticism of the use of electronic voting machines, in use in the country since 1996. Through electronic voting machines, Bolsonaro was elected to successive terms as a federal deputy and even won the presidential elections in 2018.
This was the second statement made by Jair Bolsonaro to the Federal Police this month. On the 5th, he spoke to investigators about the scandal involving jewelry received as a gift from the government of Saudi Arabia.
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