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Flávio Bolsonaro published an incendiary open letter Wednesday denouncing fraud in Brazil’s presidential election on Sunday, just hours after arriving in the United States in violation of a travel ban.
Providing no evidence that the election result had been manipulated, Bolsonaro issued a statement in which he initially described himself as the “real president-elect” before being replaced by “the leader of Brazil.”
Bolsonaro landed in Miami Wednesday morning with his family after a secret 24-hour trip via Argentina and Ecuador. He said he was forced to leave Brazil because he was a victim of political persecution.
However, Bolsonaro’s claims about the election were immediately disavowed by some of his closest political allies.
Rogério Marinho, a top senator from his liberal party who coordinated his campaign, said there was “no evidence” of electoral fraud and that Bolsonaro was “extremely shaken” by the surprise runoff victory Sunday of incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Asked to comment on Bolsonaro’s claims, US President Donald Trump said Sunday’s election had been “very strange” but added that “I’m not going to get involved.”
Bolsonaro lost to Lula on Sunday by 52 percent to 48 percent after opinion polls clearly marked him as the favorite.
The next day, police asked him to surrender his passports, saying he could pose a flight risk as they continued two investigations into allegations of corruption and money laundering involving Bolsonaro and others. He denies any wrongdoing.
Last year, his father Jair Bolsonaro was sentenced to 27 years in prison for planning a coup after losing to Lula in the 2022 presidential election. Flávio Bolsonaro had said that one of his priorities if elected would be to obtain a pardon for his father.
Bolsonaro, his wife and two daughters disembarked from a private jet in Miami on Wednesday morning after the Trump administration announced it would grant them visas.
In his letter released later in the day, Bolsonaro pointed to the controversial decision by a Supreme Court judge, who was previously Lula’s personal lawyer, to extend voting hours by two hours in Sunday’s election.
The move responds to a request from Lula’s Workers’ Party following complaints about public transportation problems in several states. Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party had also called for longer voting deadlines in areas hit by heavy rain.
Bolsonaro called the decision to extend voting hours “illegitimate and illegal” and claimed it allowed Lula to achieve a “mathematical impossibility” of obtaining 10 million more votes between the first and second rounds. But he provided no evidence or details about the alleged fraud.
Data from Brazil’s electoral court showed that only about 34,000 people voted following the extended voting hours. Lula won the contest by a margin of 4.4 million votes.
Kassio Nunes Marques, president of the electoral court, said public transport problems and extended voting hours did not affect the result when he declared Lula the winner on Sunday evening. Nunes Marques is also a judge on the Supreme Court, where he was appointed by Jair Bolsonaro.
On Wednesday, Nunes Marques issued a statement saying that the electoral process had taken place “completely normal” and that “the voters had legitimately chosen their representatives.”
In his letter, Bolsonaro said the order issued shortly after the election ordering him to surrender his passport was “political persecution.”
His decision to flee Brazil could endanger his family’s dominance of right-wing politics in Latin America’s largest democracy.
His father is under house arrest in Brasilia, while his younger brother, Eduardo Bolsonaro, lives in self-imposed exile in Texas and was convicted this year of interfering in his father’s trial.
In his letter, Bolsonaro compares himself to political dissidents like Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, who returned to the country on Sunday after a year in exile.
“Charles de Gaulle led Free France from London, condemned to death by the Vichy regime, and returned to liberate his country. José Martí organized the struggle for the independence of Cuba against New York,” he writes.
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