Flavio Bolsonaro Leaves Brazil for the US After Defeat, Defying Passport Order
Flavio Bolsonaro has left Brazil for the United States after losing Sunday's presidential election, Reuters reported, after refusing a Supreme Court order to surrender his passports in a money-laundering probe he denies. The US State Department will issue visas to him and his family, a senior official said, although his exact location and travel documents remain unclear.
Brazilian Senator Flavio Bolsonaro has left Brazil for the United States after losing Sunday's presidential election, according to Reuters, which cited three sources on Tuesday afternoon. He has yet to concede to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and he left after refusing to comply with a Supreme Court order to surrender his passports in a money-laundering probe in which he denies wrongdoing.
The United States State Department will issue visas to Flavio Bolsonaro and his family and allow them entry into the United States, a senior State Department official told Reuters. One source close to the family said he had landed in Florida, but declined to say where, and Reuters reported that the location of Flavio, his wife and two daughters was not immediately clear. It was also not immediately clear whether he would seek asylum, and neither the United States Embassy in Brazil nor his lawyer immediately responded to requests for comment, according to reporting of the departure.
Passports, a deadline, and an unanswered question
Flavio Bolsonaro was given 24 hours on Monday to surrender his passports, and that deadline has now passed, with two sources telling Reuters his documents have been cancelled. That raises an obvious practical question that reporting has not yet answered: how entry to the United States will work if his passports have been cancelled. The State Department's visa assurance and the cancellation report sit side by side in the same reporting, and this article does not resolve the tension between them.
The departure is a new development from the passport story MagnetDaily reported on 27 October. Then, the news was the court order itself. Now, the news is that he has left the country rather than comply with it, and that Washington has promised entry visas to him and his family.
Why Washington's role matters
The departure threatens to deepen a rift between the two most populous nations in the Americas, according to Reuters. Lula has accused Washington of colluding with the Bolsonaros to put them back in power, and Reuters reported ahead of Sunday's election on a United States State Department campaign to restore them to office. United States President Donald Trump, who has previously alleged that Flavio's father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, was a victim of judicial persecution in Brazil, said on Monday that the Brazilian vote "looked like another rigged election", although he made no mention of Flavio's departure in comments to the press that day.
The parallel with the father is striking, and it is part of why this story travels. Jair Bolsonaro also went to the United States after refusing to concede to Lula in 2022, when Joe Biden was president. He eventually returned to Brazil and was later given a 27-year sentence for plotting a coup after his supporters stormed government buildings in Brasilia. Flavio Bolsonaro's case is different — a money-laundering probe, not a coup plot — and his denial of wrongdoing should be kept in view. What happens next depends on three unknowns: where he is, on what travel documents he travelled, and what, if anything, he says publicly next.