Cid tells the PF that he did not see Bolsonaro speak to the military – 03/12/2024 – Power

Lieutenant Colonel Mauro Cid told the Federal Police, in a statement lasting more than nine hours on Monday (11), that he did not participate until the end of the meeting between former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL) and the commanders of the Armed Forces in that those present had discussed a coup plan.

According to people with knowledge of the testimony, the soldier said that he only participated in the first part of the meeting, when the President’s advisor for international affairs, Filipe Martins, presented a document that detailed a series of alleged interference by the Judiciary in the Bolsonaro government.

According to what Cid told investigators, the accusations to the Court were presented at that meeting in recital format — the initial part of a decree that seeks to give legality to the presidential act. One of the examples given by Mauro Cid of facts that would be listed in the text is the decision of the STF (Supreme Federal Court) to prevent Alexandre Ramagem from taking office as director of the Federal Police.

The document, according to the version presented by Cid, did not contain a decree or anti-democratic measures, such as the arrest of Supreme Court ministers.

Cid stated that Bolsonaro asked for the second part of the meeting to be only between him and the then military chiefs: Freire Gomes (Army), Almir Garnier (Navy) and Baptista Júnior (Air Force).

According to reports, it was at that moment that the then president would have sounded out the commanders about the barracks’ support for possible coup actions to be carried out in the face of supposed interference from the Judiciary.

Mauro Cid told investigators that, as he did not participate in the entire meeting, he could not say precisely how each of the military leaders reacted to the probe by the then head of the Executive.

He reinforced, however, that reports passed on to him and messages circulating in military circles said that Garnier had made the Navy available for coup actions.

According to the lieutenant colonel’s version, Garnier had been saying that there were around 700 men stationed in Brasília. Cid said he had not heard this version from the Navy chief himself.

Mauro Cid’s testimony is confidential and not even the military’s defense has access to the document with the entirety of what he reported to the Federal Police. Lawyers for other targets have said that investigators use leaked excerpts from statements to reinforce narratives.

The lieutenant colonel testified for the fourth time to the Federal Police as part of the plea bargain he signed in September 2023 with the PF. The hearing lasted around nine hours and, according to reports made to the Sheetmuch of the time was dedicated to confirming what Cid had already told the investigators in previous meetings.

The soldier said in Monday’s testimony that he frequently sent messages to the then Army commander, General Freire Gomes, while Bolsonaro probed assistants and political allies for support for the democratic rupture.

Contacts became more frequent in mid-November, when the military leadership tried to discover who at Palácio do Planalto was leaking internal information from the Force and orchestrating attacks on the reputation of generals opposed to the coup — called “watermelon generals” on social media, in false reference that the military were communists.

Mauro Cid also alleged to investigators that meetings identified as coup plotters in the PF report that supported the Tempus Veritatis operation were, in fact, meetings between military friends.

In the report, the Federal Police say that, on November 28, 2022, Bolsonaro participated in a meeting with other military personnel with special forces training. According to messages exchanged between Cid and Colonel Bernardo Romão Correa Neto, the meeting would be between soldiers who worked as assistants to generals of the Army High Command.

In the version presented by Cid, the meeting at the end of November was not to plot a coup d’état and only occurred because the Army High Command was meeting in Brasília that week. The generals’ assistant colonels, therefore, were in the federal capital.

As there are divisions within the Army and rivalries between special forces and precursors (another career specialization), soldiers tend to participate in separate meetings.

In that case, as Cid told investigators, there was dissatisfaction within the military ranks with Lula’s (PT) electoral victory. Therefore, the topic was discussed among the officers, but without, according to the lieutenant colonel’s version, constituting planning for a coup d’état.

The accusation was agreed while the PF was advancing suspicions that Cid and his father, General Mauro Lourena Cid, had sold jewelry received by Bolsonaro as state gifts so that the former president could keep the money.

When he closed the plea, Mauro Cid also said he was willing to collaborate with the PF’s investigation into the fraud on the vaccination card that the military had carried out to allow family members and Bolsonaro to travel to the United States even without having been immunized against Covid- 19.

The investigations, however, advanced in another direction. The focus became the discussions that Bolsonaro and his allies would have carried out to try to prevent Lula from taking office.