Brazil's Bolsonaro gets 27-year jail sentence for coup plot
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Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro at his residence in Brasilia on Thursday. Photo: Sergio Lima
Brazil's former President Jair Bolsonaro was convicted of plotting a military coup to overturn the country's 2022 election in a majority ruling by the Brazilian Supreme Court on Thursday.
The latest: Bolsonaro's lawyers said in a media statement after he was sentenced to more than 27 years in prison that they would appeal and called the prison term "excessive and disproportionate."
The big picture: President Trump, who demanded that Brazil drop criminal charges against Bolsonaro in a letter that threatened to impose a 50% tariff on Brazilian imports, said he found it "surprising that could happen, very much like they tried to do with me," comparing the verdict to prosecutions he faced that were dropped after his 2024 election win, per a pool report.
- Trump did not immediately answer the reporter's question on whether he will now impose additional sanctions on Brazil.
- Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the "United States will respond accordingly to this witch hunt" in a post to X that also attacked Brazilian Justice Alexandre de Moraes, whom the U.S. has sanctioned in response to the Bolsonaro case.
- Brazil's foreign ministry said in response on X that "threats" like the one Rubio made "attack Brazilian authority and ignores the facts and the compelling evidence in the records" and these "will not intimidate our democracy," per an auto-translation.
State of play: Bolsonaro and his co-accused were charged in February following a two-year investigation into the fallout from the 2022 election that Bolsonaro never formally conceded, which saw his supporters storm the presidential palace and other government buildings on Jan. 8, 2023.
- Four of the five Supreme Court justices voted to find Bolsonaro and seven other defendants guilty and one judge voted to acquit him.
- The 70-year-old, who denied any wrongdoing, faces what could effectively be a life sentence if his appeal is unsuccessful.
Go deeper: Brazilian judge's visa yanked by U.S. for prosecuting Trump allies
Editor's note: This article has been updated with new details throughout.
