At the beginning of August, former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro was placed under house arrest for reportedly violating a Brazilian Supreme Court censorship order by virtually attending a government protest.
This totally together, vampiric-looking drag queen…
Alexandre de Moraes, the man attempting to ban 𝕏 in Brazil. pic.twitter.com/PJua4pWveX
— Creepy.org (@creepydotorg) April 8, 2024
…took away all of Bolsonaro’s electronic devices and limited contact with family and friends in anticipation of the upcoming trial on coup charges.
…Mr. Bolsonaro, who was ordered last month to wear an ankle monitor while he awaited trial, had already been told to remain at home most hours, stay away from foreign embassies and keep off social media platforms.
In the new ruling on Monday, Alexandre de Moraes, the Supreme Court justice who is overseeing his case, said that Mr. Bolsonaro had violated some of those terms, indirectly using social media through the accounts of his allies and sons.
A day earlier, one of those sons, a Brazilian senator, shared a video in which the former president virtually addresses his supporters in Rio de Janeiro.
In his decision, Justice Moraes said that this violation and others were “deliberate” and made it necessary to impose more serious restrictions on Mr. Bolsonaro.
…The judge also ordered the Brazilian police to seize Mr. Bolsonaro’s cellphone and limited visits to his home, except by his close family and lawyers.
Conveniently for Justice de Moraes, he is also a trial judge.
No conflict of interest too deep needs to be considered for ‘justice’ in Brazil.
And the Bolsonaro trial for a coup d’état has been moving glacially along over the past month, as five justices of the 11-member Supreme Court heard witnesses and weighed the former president’s fate.
What exactly does he stand accused of?
Trying to stay in power after an election he claims was stolen from him. These Supreme Court members see a lurid tale of planned assassinations and violent conspiracy, where Bolsonaro has denied it all, maintaining he was only looking at every constitutional way of remaining in office.
…Mr. Bolsonaro has been accused of overseeing a vast conspiracy that prosecutors say included plans to overturn the vote and assassinate the election’s winner, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva before he took office as president.
Mr. Bolsonaro denies planning a coup or plotting to kill his rival, but admits to studying “ways within the Constitution” to remain in office after losing an election he claimed had been stolen from him.
Today, with his chief nemesis de Moraes leading the way, three of them voted to convict Bolsonaro of attempting to overthrow the government.
Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro was convicted by a Supreme Court majority on Thursday of plotting a coup to remain in power after losing the 2022 election, a powerful blow to the populist far-right movement he created.
The presumptive ruling by a majority of a panel of five justices in Brazil’s Supreme Court makes Bolsonaro the first former president in the country’s history to be convicted for attacking democracy.
“This criminal case is almost a meeting between Brazil and its past, its present, and its future,” Justice Carmen Lucia said before she voted to convict Bolsonaro of attempting a coup, a reference to previous attempts to overthrow democracy in the country’s history.
There was ample evidence, she added, that Bolsonaro acted “with the purpose of eroding democracy and institutions.”
The process is a little more complicated than ‘That’s it! We have a majority!’
The other two justices on the panel must also render their decisions for the ruling to be official, but the conviction is already assured. De Moraes went for the jugular immediately, and no surprise there.
Inevitably, January 6 comparisons echoed through the coverage as protest footage was played and dissected.
What is surprising is the sharp dissent from one holdout of the five, and the questions being raised about the fairness of a trial by a predisposed panel of five instead of the entire bench.
…Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who is overseeing the case, opened voting this week by deciding to convict Mr. Bolsonaro on all charges and delivering a sharp rebuke to claims by Mr. Bolsonaro’s defense that there had never been any conspiracy to hold onto power. “There is no doubt that there was an attempted coup,” he said.
Two other justices, Flávio Dino and Cármen Lúcia Antunes Rocha, agreed and also cast votes to convict.
Just one justice, Luiz Fux, disagreeing sharply with his colleagues, voted to absolve Mr. Bolsonaro of all the charges a day earlier, arguing that there was no direct evidence linking the former president to the crimes.
Justice Fux also raised questions about whether the case should have been heard by all 11 members of the Supreme Court and whether the defense had been given too little time to review the evidence.
According to Shellenberger, the justice lit a fire under the persecution (and I spelled that right.)
The media said the case against Brazil’s former President Bolsonaro for supposedly plotting a coup was a slam dunk. It wasn’t. A Supreme Court Justice appointed by the ruling Left-wing Workers Party just annihilated the prosecution as fraudulent. Incredible to watch. pic.twitter.com/9CxEs0jYi0
— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) September 10, 2025
…”And I say, Mr. President, because it is important, and only for this historical reason, that the guarantee of adversarial proceedings and a full defense, incorporated into Western law long ago, was already emphasized in the work of the Stoic philosopher Seneca, who stated that, ‘Whoever decides anything… without hearing the other side, even if they decide fairly, is not truly just.’
“This has been reiterated over the years in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948 by the UN General Assembly. Article 11: Everyone charged with a criminal offense has the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty according to law in a public trial at which they have had all the guarantees necessary for their defense.”
Even if de Moraes and this Lula panel prevails, which it will, according to Glenn Greenwald, Justice Fux bringing up the injustice of a case concerning a former president not being heard before the entire court should automatically trigger an appeal.
.@STF_oficial Justice Fux is absolutely DESTROYING the fake news political lawfare that @Alexandre de Moraes has been waging against President @jairbolsonaro and the good people of Brazil. 🇧🇷
The charges against President Bolsonaro are fraudulent and unconstitutional!!! https://t.co/K66IbkCrZ7
— Jason Miller (@JasonMiller) September 10, 2025
The left here is already spinning this as a victory.
Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, once known as the “Trump of the tropics,” appears to be on the verge of a conviction for his role in a failed coup attempt launched after he lost his last election. And on Tuesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt appeared to threaten Brazil with “military might” if Bolsonaro should face repercussions.
…Leavitt’s response tried to portray the administration as a bastion of free speech and touted its tariffs against Brazil as a response to the case against Bolsonaro.
“I don’t have any additional actions to preview for today, but I can tell you this is a priority for the administration and the president is unafraid to use the economic might, the military might, of the United States to protect free speech around the world,” she said.
Trump is actually waging an open assault on free speech in the United States (famously, part of “the world”). So Leavitt’s spin here is detached from reality. But her reference to “military might” in the context of defending an ousted authoritarian ruler is noteworthy. Not only does such a threat run counter to the president’s campaign vow to avoid launching new wars, but it also arguably puts Brazil on notice that the U.S. may consider using force to prevent the country from holding Bolsonaro accountable.
Bolsonaro is facing 42 years in prison if he is denied a chance to appeal or, receiving an appeal, loses it.
The relationship dynamics are going to seriously shift if de Moraes and Lula win their war against the ‘right-wing’ this way.
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