Brazil court rejects Jair Bolsonaro’s bid to attend Trump’s inauguration

Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro – who is under investigation for allegedly plotting a coup – has seen his hopes of attending Donald Trump’s inauguration dashed after a judge ruled his confiscated passport would not be returned in case the disgraced politician used it to flee abroad.

Bolsonaro’s travel document was seized by federal police last February as investigators deepened their inquiries into what they call a sprawling conspiracy to dismantle Brazil’s 40-year-old democracy.

In November, the far-right populist, who governed Brazil from 2019 until 2023, was one of nearly 40 people who were formally accused of being part of a criminal plot to stop his leftwing successor from taking power by staging a rightwing coup.

Bolsonaro’s lawyers petitioned the supreme court earlier this month, arguing their client should be allowed a six-day trip to the US in order to attend the 20 January swearing-in of Trump, the Brazilian politician’s most important foreign ally. This week Bolsonaro told the New York Times he was so excited about the prospect of seeing Trump in the flesh that he wasn’t “even taking Viagra anymore”.

But the request was disregarded, and on Thursday, Judge Alexandre de Moraes ruled that the “seriousness of the crimes ascribed” to Bolsonaro meant he should not be given back his passport in case he absconded.

On the eve of that decision, the prosecutor general, Paulo Gonet, argued that the public interest in potentially stopping Bolsonaro from attempting to evade justice trumped Bolsonaro’s “private interest” in seeing the 47th US president take power on Monday.

A 884-page federal police report released in late 2024 accused Bolsonaro of taking a lead role in the alleged coup attempt and trying to persuade members of the military top brass to back him.

Part of the alleged intrigue included a plan to abduct or assassinate top leaders, including the leftist politician who beat Bolsonaro in the 2022 election, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Bolsonaro, who has already been banned from seeking election until 2030 for spreading misinformation about Brazil’s electoral system, denies the accusations. “They’re trying to humiliate me … paint me as the world’s worst criminal,” he told the Wall Street Journal.

But analysts largely agree that the police report brought Bolsonaro a step closer to prison. “The chances of him being arrested have never been higher,” Celso Rocha de Barros, a political columnist and author, said last year.

Bolsonaro is likely to be represented at Trump’s inauguration by his congressman son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, who some see as a potential political heir and a candidate in the 2026 presidential election. Writing on social media on Wednesday, Eduardo Bolsonaro claimed his father was the victim of “lawfare”.

“[They are] using the justice system as a weapon to crush political opponents in court because they are afraid to face them at the polls,” he wrote.