Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro told authorities probing the Jan. 8 attacks on the country’s capital that he had already moved on from his election loss by the time the violence erupted, according to his defense team.
(Bloomberg) — Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro told authorities probing the Jan. 8 attacks on the country’s capital that he had already moved on from his election loss by the time the violence erupted, according to his defense team.
The former president testified to Federal Police on Wednesday as part of its investigation into the insurrection attempt, during which Bolsonaro supporters who refused to accept the result of October’s contest stormed major government buildings in Brasilia. Bolsonaro has denied responsibility for the riots and told investigators that he had “turned the page” on his narrow defeat to leftist rival Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, his attorneys said.
“The former president stated that the 2022 election is water under the bridge,” Daniel Tesser, Bolsonaro’s lawyer, told reporters after Bolsonaro’s testimony concluded. “From the moment of his defeat, he made a transition, and on December 30 he left the country for a vacation he hadn’t taken for four years.”
Brazil’s Supreme Court earlier this month ordered Bolsonaro to testify as part of the investigation. Before the election, Bolsonaro had claimed that electronic voting machines were vulnerable to fraud and manipulation, and crowds of his supporters camped outside of military barracks in Brasilia in the weeks between his defeat and the outbreak of violence.
Bolsonaro never explicitly conceded his defeat and left Brazil for Florida days before the official end of his term in December. He was in the US during the attacks, which caused significant damage to the presidential palace, supreme court and congress.
A second attorney for the former president, Paulo Amador da Cunha Bueno, said Wednesday that Bolsonaro never asserted that the election was rigged against him. He said that Bolsonaro had repudiated the riots the night they occurred, and dismissed Bolsonaro’s posting of a video questioning the electoral system three days later as an accident.
“This video was posted on the president’s Facebook page as he tried to save it to his WhatsApp archive for later viewing,” Bueno told reporters, adding that Bolsonaro was under the effect of medication because he had been admitted to a hospital in Orlando with a intestinal obstruction.
The probe into the insurrection attempt is just one of the investigations Bolsonaro currently faces in Brazil. Earlier this month, he appeared before the Federal Police to testify in a case involving roughly $3 million of jewelry allegedly gifted to him by the government of Saudi Arabia.
Read More: Mysterious $3 Million Jewelry From Saudi Arabia Haunts Bolsonaro
Brazil’s electoral authorities are also investigating Bolsonaro’s claims about voting machines during a gathering of foreign ambassadors and diplomats in Brasilia last July.
Senate President Rodrigo Pacheco on Wednesday launched a separate investigation into the riots, officially approving an inquiry that will be overseen by a panel of lawmakers from both chambers of Brazil’s legislature.
–With assistance from Bruna Lessa.
(Updates with additional details and comments from lawyers)
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