With suspended session, Bolsonaro trial will resume on Tuesday

The judgment of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) that could make former President Jair Bolsonaro ineligible for eight years was suspended this Thursday morning (22) and will resume next Tuesday (27). Prosecution and defense attorneys have already made their oral arguments.

Tarcísio Vieira, lawyer for former president Jair Bolsonaro and the vice president of his presidential ticket in 2022, Braga Netto, highlighted that the TSE cannot be the stage for political discussions. In reference to the speech of the prosecuting attorney, who classified Bolsonaro supporters as “hordes” who oppose civilization, Vieira said that “bolsonarism is not on trial”.

For his part, Walber Agra, a lawyer for the Democratic Labor Party (PDT), said that the purpose of the prosecution is “to prevent our civilization from being attacked again by these hordes”, in reference to Bolsonaro supporters involved in the January 8 acts.

Although the trial is centered on a meeting that Bolsonaro had with ambassadors in July 2022, transmitted through official government channels, Agra accused Bolsonaro of participating in an alleged attempted coup d’état, an accusation justified by the draft of the coup found in the house of the former Minister of Justice Anderson Torres in January 2023. The PDT lawyer called the fact “enthronement of chaos to conquer our institutions, undermine and hurt the democratic regime”. Agra said the draft “is just the shameful apex of disregard for the public good.”