The former presidential candidate and current Brazilian senator Flávio Bolsonaro says, from his exile in Miami, that he planned and carried out on his own his departure from Brazil in order to evade a foreseeable arrest order, and he claims that he will not reveal how he managed to leave the country after crossing several South American states before entering the United States.
"It was me alone. There was no help from absolutely anyone, from any Government," the conservative politician, 45, has declared in his first interview with the newspaper "The New York Times" after having escaped last week.
"How I got here, I will take it to the grave," he has stressed, thereby denying the version provided to the same newspaper by U.S. officials who said that his trip on a private plane would have been handled by representatives of the White House and authorized directly by President Donald Trump.
The leader left Brazil after receiving notice from the Justice Department that required him to hand over his passports at the end of the presidential elections, in the context of a case for money laundering related to alleged foreign funding of his campaign. The senator will lose his parliamentary immunity at the beginning of 2027 and has repeatedly denounced being the victim of political persecution by the country’s Supreme Court.
"I already know that the final outcome would have been my imprisonment," he said, considering his conviction inevitable if he stayed in Brazilian territory, and he cited as an example the 27 years of prison imposed on his father, the former president Jair Bolsonaro, for the 2023 coup attempt.
The parliamentarian explained that the decision to leave was made suddenly, along with his wife, the morning after his defeat at the polls, after holding a meeting with his father in Brasília.
His departure adds another member of the Bolsonaro clan to life abroad, after his brother Eduardo Bolsonaro also settled in the United States following his conviction in Brazil for pressuring the Trump Administration to influence the judicial proceedings his father was facing.
HE INSISTS THAT LULA’S VICTORY WAS "MATHEMATICALLY IMPOSSIBLE"
Although international election authorities, independent observers and the main figures of his own party have endorsed the cleanliness of the elections and recognized the victory of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Flávio Bolsonaro has reiterated, without providing evidence, that the defeat was “mathematically impossible,” accusing the institutional apparatus of favoring the left.
In his statements to the New York newspaper, he has expanded his allegations of fraud by suggesting irregularities in the vote tabulation center and has again taken aim at the extension of voting hours decided by the authorities because of bad weather conditions.
Washington has granted Bolsonaro and his relatives a humanitarian immigration status that will allow them to remain in U.S. territory for at least one year.
From the United States, the opposition leader has said in advance that he intends to support from afar legislative initiatives in Brazil, such as an amnesty for those convicted for the assaults on the institutions of January 2023 — including his father — and the lowering of the age of criminal responsibility, and he has not closed the door to running again for the Presidency in the event that new elections are called.