Brazil's top court announced a probe into Jair Bolsonaro after thousands of his supporters stormed Brazil's capital Sunday.
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Brazil’s supreme court said late Friday that former President Jair Bolsonaro will be investigated for allegedly inciting his far-right supporters to storm the Brazilian capital on Jan. 8.
Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes approved the investigation request from the prosecutor-general’s office, citing Bolsonaro’s claims of election fraud.
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In a video posted on social media on Jan. 10, Bolsonaro said that election winner Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was not democratically voted into office, but was chosen by the Supreme Court and Brazil’s electoral authority.
After weeks of violence, a team of prosecutors was formed to combat anti-democratic acts. The prosecutors argued that although Bolsanaro posted the video after the riot, its content warranted an investigation into his conduct before Sunday’s riot.
Roughly 5,000 people showed up at the violent protests.
ZUMAPRESS.com
He removed the video the same morning it was posted and has remained otherwise largely quiet since losing the Oct. 30 election, choosing to skip his leftist opponent’s Jan. 1 inauguration and taking up residence in Florida since December.
De Moraes, one of Bolsonaro’s political rivals, wrote that Bolsonaro’s history of attacking Brazil’s government institutions, including the Supreme Court, “may have contributed, in a very relevant way, to the occurrence of criminal and terrorist acts,” according to The New York Times.
