Flávio Bolsonaro declared himself the “true president” of Brazil after losing last Sunday’s presidential election and fleeing to the United States.
After landing on a private jet with his family in Miami, Florida, on Wednesday morning, the far-right senator published the claim in a letter – even though his own party has recognised the legitimate victory of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, as have all of Brazil’s institutions, and international observers who monitored and endorsed the vote.
Brazil’s three main newspapers – Folha de S.Paulo, O Globo and O Estado de S.Paulo – all described Bolsonaro’s declaration as “coup-mongering”.
The senator later deleted the letter and published a new one in which, instead of calling himself the “true president”, he described himself as “the leader of Brazil”.
After losing Sunday’s runoff vote to Lula, Bolsonaro disappeared for more than ۲۴ hours, until Argentina’s migration authorities said he had entered the country by land on Tuesday night.
From there he boarded a Gulfstream IV, registered LV-JQW, which had been parked at Puerto Iguazú airport since the early hours of the previous morning, when the first reports emerged in Argentinian media that he intended to flee on it.
Bolsonaro, the son of the jailed former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, took off on the jet with his wife and two teenage daughters at about ۱۱.۳۰pm, bound for Guayaquil in Ecuador, reportedly to avoid Brazilian airspace. They made a brief stop in Ecuador and continued on to the Miami-Opa Locka airport, a private aviation hub about ۱۱ miles north of downtown Miami catering to corporate executives and wealthy travelers.
Bolsonaro, wearing a black bulletproof vest and looking somber, and his family emerged from the plane into a postcard-perfect sunny south Florida morning at ۹.۲۴am. They briefly remained inside the airport before leaving, shielded by black umbrellas, climbing into a dark gray Ford Expedition Max and speeding away under police escort.
Bolsonaro said nothing to reporters before boarding the vehicle and the mood was low-key, without any supporters present to welcome him and only two dozen journalists who were kept at a distance by two Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents.
In the letter, published about seven hours after his arrival, Bolsonaro also thanked Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, “for his courage, sense of justice and legality”, and Donald Trump “and the wonderful American people for welcoming me”.
He again repeated, without evidence, his claim that there had been “electoral fraud” – a claim rejected by Brazil’s electoral court and supreme court, as well as the presidents of the lower house and senate. Bolsonaro’s party said on Monday: “We recognise the presidential result.”
At least three different versions of the letter were published by Bolsonaro and his allies, including one that used the country’s pre-۱۹۶۸ name and the English spelling “Brazil” rather than the Portuguese “Brasil” – which some saw as another sign of the Bolsonaro clan’s subservience to the US.
Brazilian newspapers reported that Bolsonaro and his family had been granted humanitarian visas in the US. On Tuesday night the US president said he would approve their move to the country.
“They’re fine people. … I didn’t take sides, you know. I know them both. I know Lula. I know Flávio a little bit. I know the father very well,” the US president said.
On Wednesday, however, when asked about Bolsonaro’s claim, Trump said he would stay out of Brazil’s post-election turmoil.
“Well, I’m not going to make a comment about that, but I know that we gave him a pass to come into the country, so we’ll see,” he said. “But I won’t get involved. It was a very strange election, that’s for sure.”
Lula called Bolsonaro’s flight “shameful”. “This is what the Bolsonaro family are like. Brazil is their second homeland. Their first homeland is licking the boots of the US, as they’ve become accustomed to doing,” he said at an event celebrating his ۸۱st birthday in Brasília.
Some in the Brazilian government suspected Bolsonaro allies had spent Tuesday privately telling the press he was already on his way to the US to distract from his real plan to go through Argentina. The federal police are facing criticism for failing to prevent him from leaving the country.
There is a gap between the last time he was seen by allies, at about ۶pm on Monday, and the moment he entered Argentina late on Tuesday. It remains unclear how or when he travelled to the border, or where he was during that time.
Footage from a television channel there shows two vans crossing the border checkpoint and then being escorted by airport security officers to the airport.
The Argentinian newspaper Página/۱۲ reported that the aircraft belonged to the businessman Sergio Daniel Mastropietro, who was investigated by local police in one of the biggest scandals of Javier Milei’s administration, involving the alleged payment of bribes linked to the purchase of medicines for people with disabilities.
Bolsonaro is under investigation in at least two criminal cases, one of them examining suspicions that the senator was involved in a money-laundering scheme worth about £۶۸۰m ($۹۰۵m) involving betting companies.
It was in connection with that case that, shortly after the election result, Brazilian police asked the supreme court to order Bolsonaro’s passport to be retained over concerns he could flee, citing an interview given last Friday by his brother, the former congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro.
Speaking on a podcast in the US, where he is in self-imposed exile and lobbying the Trump administration against Lula, Eduardo said if his brother were to lose the election, he should not concede and should go to the US.
O Globo newspaper reported that the escape had been planned for weeks as a contingency in case he lost, and that Eduardo had been its main organiser, holding talks with US officials about receiving the senator.
Fleeing Brazil has almost become standard practice among Bolsonaro supporters facing criminal charges or convictions in the country: about a dozen politicians or influencers closely aligned with Jair Bolsonaro have done the same in recent years.
The former president himself spent three months in Florida shortly after losing the ۲۰۲۲ election. He later returned to Brazil and, while facing trial over the attempted coup, spent two nights at the Hungarian embassy in Brasília, then run by his ally Viktor Orbán.
While under house arrest after being sentenced to ۲۷ years in prison, the patriarch of the Bolsonaro clan used a soldering iron in an attempt to destroy his electronic ankle monitor.
