Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has requested a six-month tourist visa to stay in the United States, according to his attorney, as the far-right politician is being investigated at home over claims that he assisted in inciting the riot that broke out in the Brazilian capital earlier this month.
According to Bolsonaro’s lawyer Felipe Alexandre, US authorities received the Brazilian president’s visa application on Friday. The Financial Times broke the news first.
Bolsonaro will remain in the US while the application is being processed, according to Alexandre. Before determining what to do next, the client “would want to take some time off, clear his thoughts, and enjoy being a tourist in the United States for a few months,” the attorney stated.
He will decide whether or not to use the entire six months, and we will follow whatever plan we decide on in light of his evolving plans.
After a mob of his followers rioted in the nation’s capital of Brasilia on January 8, Bolsonaro, who departed Brazil for the US just days before his successor, left-wing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, was sworn in this month, has come under heavy fire.
The country’s Congress, presidential mansion, and Supreme Court were all looted by tens of thousands of Bolsonaro supporters in an effort to put pressure on the military to annul the results of the election in October, in which Lula narrowly defeated his far-right competitor in a tense run-off.
For months, Bolsonaro, a former army captain who has voiced sympathy for the military government that controlled Brazil from 1964 to 1985, made unsubstantiated claims about the vulnerability of the nation’s computerized voting system.
After the official election results were announced, he kept quiet publicly for a while and never acknowledged Lula’s victory, leading some observers to claim that he was responsible for instigating the incident in Brasilia, a claim Bolsonaro denies.
Immediately following the assault, Bolsonaro claimed on Twitter that while democratic protests can be peaceful, acts of vandalism and invasions of public institutions are “exceptions to the rule.” Flavio Bolsonaro, a senator, said his father had been “almost incommunicado” since the election results were released and criticized attempts to link the former president to the unrest.
However, the Brazilian Supreme Court decided to launch an investigation into claims that Bolsonaro had instigated the anti-democratic protests “that ended in damage and violence in Brasilia” in mid-January.
Justice Alexandre de Moraes of the Supreme Court, who is in charge of the investigations, said at the time that “public actors who continue to cowardly collaborate against democracy aiming to establish a state of exception will be held accountable.”
Bolsonaro has been in the US state of Florida, where earlier this month he briefly sought treatment at a nearby hospital for abdominal pain related to a knife cut he sustained during the 2018 presidential campaign, which he later won.
In a recent interview with CNN Brasil, the former president stated that he had intended to return to Brazil by the end of January and was considering leaving early due to health concerns.
As Bolsonaro is no longer traveling on business, it is believed that he entered the US using a visa intended for visiting world leaders, which expires on Tuesday.
When the incident on January 8 in Brazil’s capital city broke out, former justice minister Anderson Torres, a Bolsonaro supporter, was also on holiday in Florida. However, Torres has since returned to Brazil, where he was detained on suspicion of “connivance” and “omission,” despite the fact that he was in head of security in Brasilia at the time of the incident.
Some US lawmakers are concerned about Bolsonaro’s stay there and have lately encouraged President Biden “not [to] provide shelter for him, or any dictator who has inspired such violence against democratic institutions.”
In a letter to Biden dated January 12 (PDF), dozens of US Congress members urged, “We should cooperate fully with Brazilian authorities in investigating any involvement Mr. Bolsonaro or those around him played in the events of January 8 and any crimes he committed while in government.”
Nearly 1,400 people have been detained in connection with the attack in Brasilia, and Lula’s administration has promised to prosecute anyone who took part in the disturbances as well as anyone who helped organize and carry them out.
