The United States will issue Flávio Bolsonaro a visa after he fled Brazil following his devastating loss to incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Sunday’s election, a senior State Department official said.
The official told the Daily Mail on Tuesday that the department will issue visas to Bolsonaro and his family ‘and allow them entry into the United States.’
The announcement came just hours after Bolsonaro fled his native country, following the advice of his brother, Eduardo Bolsonaro, who lives in Texas and publicly encouraged Flávio to leave Brazil if he lost the election.
A spokesperson for Bolsonaro did not respond to a request for comment; his campaign manager Rogério Marinho also refused to comment.
But Bolsonaro has touted his relationship with President Donald Trump and even visited the White House in May. The family connections go deeper, with Eduardo Bolsonaro being convicted in absentia in June of illegally lobbying the Trump administration. He was sentenced to four years in prison and a warrant was recently issued for his arrest.
Trump did not offer a full-throated endorsement of Flavio Bolsonaro in the runoff against President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, as he has with some other right-of-center candidates in Latin America. But he suggested on Monday, without providing evidence, that Brazil’s election was ‘rigged.’
Bolsonaro’s decision to leave Brazil came as a deadline for him to surrender his regular and diplomatic passports expired at noon Tuesday. It remained unclear whether he had complied.
Flávio Bolsonaro will be granted a visa in the United States after he fled Brazil
Bolsonaro lost Sunday’s presidential election in Brazil to incumbent candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The two are pictured at a televised debate last week
Bolsonaro was served with the order to surrender his passports on Monday, just one day after his stunning loss.
The far-right candidate said in a video posted to social media that he received the order outside the home where his father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, is serving a 27-year sentence under house arrest for attempting a coup following his 2022 election loss to Lula. Jair fled Brazil for Florida following the defeat, but returned three months later.
‘I was ordered right on the street to hand over my passports, and I’m also prohibited from leaving the country,’ his son said in the video, as he denied that he was fleeing the country.
‘I never thought about leaving the country,’ Bolsonaro said in a video published on his social media channels. ‘I will hand over my passports and I will defend myself from this aberration. It is a clear attempt to intimidate me. But I will not be silenced.’
The sealed Supreme Court order for the younger Bolsonaro to hand over his passport, viewed by The Associated Press, was issued Sunday amid two federal investigations into the senator for alleged corruption, money laundering and tax evasion.
In one, Bolsonaro is accused of using a sports betting company to launder more than $1 billion deductions from government pensions paid to senior citizens, according to The New York Times.
In a separate case, Bolsonaro is accused of accepting millions of dollars from a disgraced banker at the center of a huge corruption scheme to finance a biopic of his father.
Prosecutors also suspect the funds from the banker were used to pay his brother, Eduardo Bolsonaro’s, expenses and to promote Flávio Bolsonaro’s political agenda with the Trump administration, documents show.
Bolsonaro has denied any wrongdoing in both cases, and has claimed Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who is heading one of the investigations, is a Lula ally.
Bolsonaro said in a video that police had stopped him in the street moments after he had visited his imprisoned father, former President Jair Bolsonaro
Mauricio Marcon, a lawmaker of Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party, also questioned de Moraes’ objectivity on Tuesday.
‘Seven minutes after the election, Alexandre de Moraes ordered his passports to be seized,’ Marcon said. Bolsonaro ‘will represent us in a free country. He will continue to be our leader.’
Meanwhile, Brazilians took to social media to ask where Bolsonaro was. Reporters gathered outside his home in the capital, Brasilia, but he did not appear.
When Paulo Figueiredo, a close ally of Bolsonaro’s who lives in the United States, was then asked about the senator’s whereabouts, he did not answer directly.
‘At this moment – following months of intense work that were unfairly thwarted – I have no desire to speak with the press. I kindly ask that you do not persist. Should I have a statement to make on any matter, I will reach out,’ Figueiredo said.
Supporters of the Brazilian presidential candidate for the Liberal Party, Flavio Bolsonaro
Brazilians had earlier taken to social media to ask where Bolsonaro was
Bolsonaro had refused to accept the election results for several hours following Sunday’s election and even asked for the results to be annulled.
He ultimately accepted defeat in his video on Monday, but claimed Lula had used unfair tactics to win.
Bolsonaro then urged the electoral court to investigate alleged election fraud and nullify Lula’s and Vice President Geraldo Alckmin’s candidacies, which the electoral court has never done before.
To overturn the result, Bolsonaro would have to present evidence of fraud affecting Lula’s 4.4 million-vote margin and convince the eight-member electoral court before the results are certified on December 18.
Lula, who turned 81 on Tuesday, received more than 64 million votes, compared with fewer than 60 million for Bolsonaro, a margin of nearly 4 percent.
In his video on Monday, Bolsonaro also said he was attempting to organize opposition among his congressional colleagues to the election results. His eight-year term as a senator expires January 31, 2027, which will also cause him to lose special jurisdiction at the country’s Supreme Court.
