Buenos Aires Herald 
Brazil’s General Prosecutors’ Office formally charged ex-President Jair Bolsonaro and 33 other people — including former public officials and military members — for plotting a scheme that included overthrowing and murdering current President Lula da Silva following the 2022 election.
Attorney General Paulo Gonet Branco filed the charges on Tuesday before the Federal Supreme Court. The statement accused the 34 people of “encouraging and carrying out acts against the three powers and the democratic rule of law.”
Brazil Federal Police had already charged Bolsonaro with plotting a coup against Da Silva last November. Now, the Prosecutor’s Office has followed suit and presented similar charges against the former president with the Supreme Court.
On January 8, 2023, Bolsonaro supporters attacked three federal government buildings in Brasilia, demanding the military take power and depose Da Silva. But protests calling for intervention by the Armed Forces, including road blockades and encampments in front of army barracks, began as soon as Lula won the elections in October 2022.
In late 2024, the federal police formally accused 36 other people aside from Bolsonaro. Among them was Fernando Cerimedo, who served as Argentine President Javier Milei’s digital strategist in 2023. Cerimedo, however, was not included in the list of people charged by the General Prosecutors’ Office.
Brazil’s Supreme Court will now decide whether to order Bolsonaro’s arrest and to take him to trial.
The former president and the rest are accused of being part of an armed criminal organization that attempted the following crimes: attempting to abolish the rule of law; carrying out a coup; damaging the country’s property and inflicting “considerable damage to the victim;” as well as destroying architectural heritage.
The general attorney based his indictments on manuscripts, digital files, and exchanges of messages. The statement goes on to say that the people involved “describe, in detail, the conspiratorial plot that was set up and executed against democratic institutions.”
According to the prosecutor’s office, the scheme was “led by the then-president of the Republic and his candidate for vice president,” General Walter Braga Netto.
In the complaint, the attorney general said that those indicted “voluntarily” and “consciously” took part in a criminal organization that went on “from at least June 29, 2021, and January 8, 2023.” They used “violence and serious threats with the goal of stopping or controlling the functioning of the Republic’s powers and deposing a legitimately elected government.”
“The investigations revealed a terrifying coup execution operation in which the death of the elected president of the Republic and Vice-President of the Republic was even admitted,” the indictment said, referring to Da Silva and Geraldo Alckmin. The plan also included killing Federal Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes.
Bolsonaro’s attorney Paulo Cunha Bueno published a statement on X Tuesday night calling the indictment “inept” and saying that the ex-president “has never agreed to any movement aimed at deconstructing the democratic rule of law or the institutions that underpin it.”
