WASHINGTON — Flávio Bolsonaro, the defeated Brazilian presidential candidate, arrived in the United States on Wednesday morning after fleeing his home country.
The State Department allowed Bolsonaro and his family into the United States and issued visas, a senior State Department official told The Daily Wire. Brazil’s Supreme Court had ordered him on Monday to turn over his passports and banned him from leaving the country.
Bolsonaro had feared he would be arrested this week, two close friends of the Bolsonaro family told The Washington Post, since he was under investigation for alleged ties to the country’s betting industry and to a banker accused of financial misconduct.
“He’s well,” one Bolsonaro ally who lives in Texas told the publication. “He’s aware that he had to leave to continue the fight against tyranny. Or else he’d be a political prisoner.”
Photo by Sergio Lima / AFP via Getty Images
Video footage shows Bolsonaro, his wife, and his two daughters leaving a plane in Miami following the country’s presidential election, which Bolsonaro lost to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro had been projected to win the election only a few days ago.
“I think they’re fine people,” President Donald Trump told reporters on Wednesday, when asked about the election and Bolsonaro heading to the United States. “The election was very strange, and I thought it was terrible.”
Asked about the election on Monday, the president said: “It looked like another rigged election, frankly,” adding: “I didn’t take sides, but it was a terrible look for the world.”
Bolsonaro and his family crossed Brazil into Argentina on Tuesday night, WaPo reported, boarded a private flight to Ecuador, and then entered the United States through Miami on Wednesday. In 2022, Bolsonaro’s father Jair Bolsonaro also fled Brazil for Florida after he lost that election to Lula
A State Department official told The Washington Post that Brazilian officials pressured the United States not to accept Bolsonaro into the country this week, given that if Bolsonaro is convicted in Brazil’s investigations into him, the United States might have to extradite him back home.
.png)
.png)
