Former President's Arrested Son Sentenced/Accused of Lobbying in the US

2026-06-17 07:26:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

The son of imprisoned former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro has been convicted by Brazil's highest court of following US interference during his father's coup trial last year.

Eduardo Bolsonaro, 41, was accused last year of lobbying US authorities to help the former president impose tariffs or sanctions on Brazil.

A former congressman in Brazil, Eduardo moved to the US in 2025 before his father, who governed the country from January 2019 to December 2022, was found guilty of plotting a military coup and sentenced to 27 years in prison.

Writing on social media on Tuesday, Eduardo called the sentence "baseless and meaningless," saying the judges wanted to stop him from running for office.

He added that there was a lack of due process in the case against him, that he was never officially notified of the case and was only informed of the case through media reports.

The Brazilian Supreme Court sentenced him in absentia to four years and two months in prison.

The younger Bolsonaro previously told the BBC that he was living in "exile" for fear of being arrested if he returned to Brazil.

He has publicly lobbied for support for his father from the Trump administration, which likened the case against the former Brazilian president to a "witch hunt."

US President Donald Trump, who sees the right-wing Bolsonaro as an ally, imposed a 50% tariff on Brazil last July, a move that current Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva called "not only wrong, but illogical."

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio later vowed that Washington would respond to Bolsonaro's condemnation. The Trump administration had already sanctioned Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes on July 30, accusing him of abuses related to his handling of cases involving Bolsonaro.

Lula said Brazil was willing to negotiate with the US on trade, but called the sanctions targeting de Moraes an "unacceptable" interference in the country's justice system.

The US has since lifted the sanctions.

During Trump's first term, the US president and former Brazilian President Bolsonaro enjoyed a friendly relationship when their presidencies overlapped, and the two had met at the White House in 2019.

Both men subsequently lost the presidential election and both refused to publicly admit defeat.

The elderly Bolsonaro was convicted of a conspiracy to overturn his defeat in the 2022 election. The case was linked to a broader effort to keep him in power, including the violent attack in January 2023 of government buildings in Brasilia by his supporters.

"This is nothing more, or less, than an attack on a political opponent - Something I know a lot about!" Trump said at the time. In response, Bolsonaro thanked the US president for his support./CNA, translated by BBC