Bolsonaro is summoned to give a statement to the PF; defense contests summons

Former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL) was summoned by the Federal Police this Monday (19) to give a statement on Thursday (22) as part of investigations into an alleged attempted coup d’état. He, former ministers, allies and military personnel were targets of an operation launched at the beginning of February based on the plea bargain of former aide-de-camp Mauro Cid.

The testimony was scheduled for 2:30 pm at the PF superintendence in Brasília.

The subpoena was confirmed by sources in the PF People’s Gazette. The report contacted the former president’s lawyers and is awaiting their response.

“His lawyers will take the necessary measures to ensure the President has all the broad defense constitutionally provided for,” said lawyer Fábio Wajngarten on social media. Petition to which the newspaper The globe had access points out that Bolsonaro will not testify until he has access to the content found on cell phones seized during the operation.

The date set by the authority for the former president’s testimony coincides with the day of Flávio Dino’s inauguration as the new minister of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), in a ceremony that will be held in the afternoon.

The testimony will also take place three days before an act scheduled by Bolsonaro on Avenida Paulista, in São Paulo, on Sunday (25), to defend himself against suspicions that are being investigated by the Federal Police.

The operation at the beginning of the month, which targeted Bolsonaro and his allies, served 37 arrest and search and seizure warrants in nine states and the Federal District. The former president was subject to precautionary measures, such as surrendering his passport and avoiding communication with other people being investigated.

Among the former president’s allies targeted by the PF are former ministers Walter Braga Netto (Casa Civil), Augusto Heleno (GSI), Anderson Torres (Justice) and Paulo Sérgio Nogueira (Defense), former aide-de-camp Marcelo Câmara , former advisors Filipe Martins and Tercio Arnaud Thomaz, among others.

According to the PF, the operation Tempus Veritatis aimed to “investigate a criminal organization that acted in the attempted coup d’état and abolition of the Democratic Rule of Law, to obtain a political advantage with the maintenance of the then President of the Republic [Bolsonaro] in the power”.

The investigations also showed that the group investigated was divided into action groups to “disseminate the occurrence of fraud in the 2022 Presidential Elections”, even before the election took place, in order to “enable and legitimize a military intervention, in dynamic of digital militia”.

The nuclei, says the PF, were divided into two lines of action, the first being in the “construction and propagation of the version of fraud in the 2022 elections, through the fallacious dissemination of vulnerabilities in the electronic voting system”.

This, according to the PF, was a speech reiterated by those investigated since 2019 and which persisted even after the results of the second round of the election in 2022.

The second axis acted in the practice of “acts to subsidize the abolition of the Democratic State of Law, through a coup d’état, with the support of military personnel with knowledge and tactics of special forces in a politically sensitive environment”.