A Brazilian supreme court judge has ordered that the bank accounts and assets of Jair Bolsonaro’s congressman son be frozen, as a political crisis – pitting Brazil’s far-right former president and Donald Trump against the current administration – intensified.
Justice Alexandre de Moraes – who has spearheaded a series of supreme court investigations into Bolsonaro – targeted the finances of Eduardo Bolsonaro, the ex-president’s third son, as a result of police suspicions that money being sent to him by his father was bankrolling his efforts to lobby the Trump administration to help Bolsonaro avoid punishment for an alleged coup attempt after the 2022 election.
Eduardo Bolsonaro, a 41-year-old politician with ties to Steve Bannon and Trump’s Maga movement, has lived in the US since February after going into self-imposed exile. He has spent recent weeks boasting on social media about his apparent success in convincing the White House to pile pressure on Brazil’s supreme court and leftwing president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, over his father’s plight.
Trump’s most significant move came on 9 July, when the US president announced plans to slap 50% tariffs on Brazilian imports because of the supposed “witch hunt” against Bolsonaro, who faces decades in jail for allegedly trying to seize power after being defeated by Lula in 2022.
Lula hit back, calling Trump’s move “unacceptable blackmail” and criticising the Brazilian “traitors” for undermining their country’s interests by supporting the tariffs. “They don’t care about our country’s economy or the harm this will do to our people,” Lula said, in an unmistakable reference to the Bolsonaros.
On Friday, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, stripped eight of Brazil’s 11 supreme court judges of their US visas in the latest phase of Trump’s attempt to force the supreme court to drop the coup case against Bolsonaro. Rubio’s move came hours after federal police raided Bolsonaro’s mansion in the capital, Brasília, fitted him with an electronic ankle tag to stop him absconding, and banned him from using social media or communicating with scores of people, including his son, Eduardo, and foreign diplomats.
On Monday, Eduardo Bolsonaro condemned Moraes’s “arbitrary” decision to freeze his accounts. “If he thinks this will make me stop, let me be clear: I will not be intimidated and I will not be silenced. I’ve prepared myself for this moment,” he tweeted.
The drama looks set to escalate further in the coming days and weeks as the supreme court prepares to announce its verdict in the trial investigating whether Bolsonaro masterminded a plot to seize power through a military coup. Bolsonaro – who, at 70, faces spending the rest of his life behind bars – has repeatedly denied the charges.
Bolsonaro supporters have announced street protests for 3 August in an attempt to re-energise their faltering movement, and claim the Trump administration is preparing to announce further sanctions targeting Brazilian authorities. “From here in the US, I’m not speaking in anyone’s name but I can guarantee you this – there will be no retreat,” Eduardo Bolsonaro told CNN Brasil on Friday.
On Monday night, Moraes warned that Jair Bolsonaro could face arrest if his lawyers failed to explain why – in apparent violation of his social media ban – Bolsonaro had made a high-profile public appearance earlier that day at congress, which was widely broadcast on social media.
During that appearance the ex-president showed reporters the monitoring tag on his left ankle and called his treatment “cowardice”. “I didn’t kill anyone!” Bolsonaro shouted, adding: “God’s law is what matters to me.”
If Trump’s interventions were intended to benefit Bolsonaro, so far they appear to have backfired. Lula has enjoyed a bounce in the polls, with many Brazilians outraged at Trump’s politically motivated attack on their economy. Those likely to be worst affected by the tariffs – set to come into force on 1 August – include agribusiness companies that have long been loyal to Bolsonaro.
