Brazil court convicts Eduardo Bolsonaro over US lobbying

Brazil’s Supreme Court has convicted Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of jailed former President Jair Bolsonaro, of lobbying the United States to intervene in his father’s coup trial, sentencing him in absentia to four years and two months in prison.

The ruling marks another legal blow to the Bolsonaro family, a central force on Brazil’s political right. Jair Bolsonaro, who governed from January 2019 to December 2022, is serving a 27-year prison sentence after being found guilty of plotting a military coup to overturn his 2022 election defeat.

Eduardo Bolsonaro, 41, was charged last year with seeking help from U.S. authorities, including through tariffs or sanctions on Brazil, as his father faced trial. A former Brazilian congressman and member of the Chamber of Deputies, he relocated to the United States in 2025 before his father’s conviction. He previously told the BBC he was living in “exile” because he feared arrest if he returned to Brazil.

A panel of the Supreme Court found that Eduardo Bolsonaro’s actions amounted to coercion against Brazil’s justice system. Al Jazeera reported that three of the four justices on the panel voted for conviction Tuesday, with one justice still yet to vote.

“It wasn’t merely an expression of opinion or a political stance, but rather conduct that clearly threatened Brazilian authorities and Brazilian citizens themselves,” Justice Cristiano Zanin said, calling the actions “illegitimate and criminal”.

Eduardo Bolsonaro rejected the verdict in a social media post Tuesday, calling the conviction “baseless and senseless”. He said the justices were trying to stop him from running for election and argued that he had been denied due process, saying he was never formally served and only learned of the case through media reports.

In March 2025, according to Al Jazeera, Eduardo Bolsonaro said he would move to the United States full time to “focus 100 percent” of his energy on “a single cause”: freeing his father. Prosecutors accused him of mounting an illegal campaign to court U.S. President Donald Trump and pressure Brazilian officials to drop the case against Jair Bolsonaro.

Trump, an ally of the right-wing former Brazilian president, publicly attacked the prosecution. In July 2025, he announced 50% tariffs on certain Brazilian products, citing Jair Bolsonaro’s trial as a reason. “This Trial should not be taking place,” Trump wrote at the time. “It is a Witch Hunt that should end IMMEDIATELY.”

The Trump administration also sanctioned Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes on July 30, accusing him of abuses linked to Bolsonaro-related cases and saying he had worked to “target political opponents” and “suppress dissent”. Trump called de Moraes a “threat” to the United States, and the sanctions were later expanded to include the justice’s family members and other Brazilian judicial officials.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva denounced the U.S. measures as interference in Brazil’s domestic affairs. He called the tariffs “not only misguided but illogical” and said sanctions targeting de Moraes were an “unacceptable” intrusion into the country’s justice system. The United States has since withdrawn the sanctions, and Al Jazeera reported that the Trump administration later relaxed tariffs as relations with Lula became more cordial.

Jair Bolsonaro and his family have portrayed his trial as a political witch hunt. Prosecutors described his actions after the 2022 election as an attempted coup tied to a wider effort to keep him in power, including the January 2023 storming of government buildings in Brasília by his supporters.

“This is nothing more, or less, than an attack on a Political Opponent – Something I know much about!” Trump said at the time. Bolsonaro thanked him for the support.