Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, who lost Brazil's October 25 presidential runoff to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, landed near Miami with his wife and two daughters on Wednesday, October 28, a day after a deadline passed for him to hand over his passports under a Supreme Court order in a money-laundering investigation. A senior State Department official had said the United States would issue the family visas. Hours after landing, Bolsonaro posted an open letter saying, "I did not flee Brazil; I left for Brazil's sake," calling the runoff "an electoral fraud" and promising to lead the opposition from the United States. He offered no evidence of fraud. His claim rests on a nationwide two-hour extension of voting ordered by Justice Cristiano Zanin, Lula's former lawyer; the electoral court's president, Kassio Nunes Marques, whom Bolsonaro's father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, appointed to the Supreme Court and who voted against both electoral-court rulings that barred the former president from running for office, has said the extension did not affect the results. The electoral court's count gave Lula a 4.43-million-vote win, Bolsonaro's Liberal Party (PL) has recognized the result, and his campaign manager said on Wednesday that there is no proof of fraud. Lula called the departure "shameful." Bolsonaro denies wrongdoing in the investigation, which he calls political persecution. (Quotes from Portuguese are Profoundd's translations.)
The order and the route out
Justice Alexandre de Moraes barred Bolsonaro from leaving Brazil and ordered his passports seized on a request the Federal Police filed on election night, citing what it called a "concrete and current" risk of flight. The request came "just seven minutes after" the electoral court confirmed the result, and Moraes granted it that night "without first consulting" the prosecutor general's office, Folha de S.Paulo columnist Mônica Bergamo reported, according to the news site NC News. Unnamed members of that office's leadership were reported on Wednesday to say the restrictions lacked evidence "considered sufficiently robust," though the office has not formally contested them and the same sources said his departure may change his legal position. On Tuesday night, the Brazilian news site UOL reported, the office formally backed a separate police request to search addresses linked to Bolsonaro; Moraes did not rule on it, and the search planned for Wednesday did not take place. The investigations predated the election, but the order "fueled accusations that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was determined to punish his political rival," The Wall Street Journal wrote. Sen. Tereza Cristina of the Progressistas party, who backed Bolsonaro and on Wednesday recognized Lula's victory, asked on Monday, after police stopped him in the street to serve the order, whether the judiciary would renew "the political persecution against opponents of the current government" in Lula's fourth term; she wrote that she wanted to believe the goal for 2027 was peace between the branches of government, and "it will not be through arbitrary intimidation that we get there."
Moraes oversaw the 2025 case in which Jair Bolsonaro was convicted of attempting a coup, and the senator called on him to resign in September. Moraes is himself waiting for the full Supreme Court to decide whether an investigation of his ties to Daniel Vorcaro can go ahead; Vorcaro is the banker charged with fraud after authorities liquidated his bank, Banco Master, and his money is at the center of a separate inquiry into the senator. A Federal Police report made public in September contains messages that police say Vorcaro sent to a phone number attributed to Moraes, though not the replies, and details a 108-million-reais contract between Banco Master and the law firm of Moraes's wife, Viviane Barci de Moraes. Moraes has not been charged. He says there is no sign of a crime in his conduct and calls the inquiry illegal, his wife has said her firm never represented the bank before the Supreme Court, and the prosecutor general's office argues the inquiry went ahead without the full court's authorization. The court adjourned on September 15 without deciding, after Justice Flávio Dino asked for more time to study the case; he has until December to return it.
On Monday morning the police gave Bolsonaro 24 hours to surrender his passports, including any foreign ones. He did not hand them over, and his Brazilian passports were canceled on Tuesday. He crossed into Argentina at about 10:50 p.m. Tuesday on an Italian passport, according to Argentine migration authorities, and flew by private charter to Opa-locka Executive Airport via Ecuador. Working with his brother Eduardo, "a small group including Trump adviser Jason Miller secured a charter jet," the Journal reported. The Federal Police say they have no record of his exit through a Brazilian border post and are investigating his failure to obey the court, but that the restrictions do not, on their own, make him a fugitive or authorize his arrest.
The letter, and the word "coup"
The letter was first released by Paulo Figueiredo, a Bolsonaro ally living in the United States; that version addressed Brazilians and the world "as the true president-elect of Brazil." Bolsonaro posted it on his X account at 5:19 p.m. Brasília time in a version calling him "the true president of Brazil" and "the president-elect," then edited the post 22 minutes later to call himself "the leader of Brazil." UOL reported, citing unnamed sources tied to U.S. diplomacy, that Trump administration officials pressed for the change; Figueiredo said the edits only fixed mistakes, including an earlier draft that an AI tool had pulled into the file.
The substance did not change. "On Sunday night, I watched, appalled, as an electoral fraud took place before my eyes," Bolsonaro wrote, blaming Zanin's voting extension, and arguing that alleged abuses during the campaign "justify" stripping the Lula-Alckmin ticket of its mandate. He wrote that "the criminals who stole Brazil's election are part of a criminal organization that has installed a tyranny," and promised a strategy, "by all peaceful and legitimate means, to prevent Lula from consolidating a dictatorial regime." He thanked Argentina's President Javier Milei "for his courage" and Trump "for taking me in." Both campaigns asked for more time that afternoon, the Associated Press reported: Lula's over bus problems in São Paulo and Salvador, cities that tend to favor him, and Bolsonaro's over heavy rain in the south, where he is favored. The requests were not the same, according to a timeline published by the news site Poder360: Bolsonaro's campaign asked the electoral court to extend voting in 19 cities in São Paulo, Paraná and Santa Catarina, while Lula's campaign asked for every state and took that request to the Supreme Court, where Zanin, whom Lula appointed, granted it. Poder360 wrote that the order overrode the electoral court, which should have decided the campaigns' requests, a point the letter also makes. An analysis of court data by the researcher Pedro Burgos, reported by Folha, counted 34,330 votes cast after the 5 p.m. close; that count does not measure Bolsonaro's separate objection that voters "were subjected to different rules" where polls closed on time.
He also wrote that Zanin's "illegitimate and illegal" action let "a mathematical impossibility" happen, with Lula adding "more than 10 million votes" between rounds. The figure is right; the impossibility is not. By Profoundd's arithmetic from the electoral court's published results, Bolsonaro, who led the first round by 2.22 million votes, gained 3.72 million in the runoff and Lula 10.38 million, out of about 14.1 million available beyond their first-round totals: 9.32 million cast for eliminated candidates, plus 4.78 million more valid votes in the runoff. Lula's gain equals about three of every four of those votes, a large share but not an impossible one. The published totals show only net changes, so they cannot show which voters switched sides, stayed home or turned out for the first time. The 34,330 late votes Burgos counted equal about 0.3 percent of Lula's gain and less than 1 percent of his 4.43-million-vote margin.
The letter uses the word "coup" once. Leaving "was not my intention," Bolsonaro wrote, "but I know exactly where this is heading. This is the classic playbook of any coup d'état." The paragraph before it says that "seven minutes after this repugnant electoral fraud," "the judge," whom the letter calls "implicated in an immense corruption scandal" and "directly cited in the inquiry he used to try to seize my passports," set "the regime's machinery of political persecution" in motion. That inquiry, which also targets the lawyer Willer Tomaz, is sealed, Gazeta do Povo reported, and Profoundd found no report naming Moraes in it in the Portuguese- and English-language coverage it read through Thursday evening; the police report on Vorcaro's messages to Moraes belongs to the separate Banco Master case. The paragraph after it lists what he calls "the script of the persecution": "passport seizure, electronic ankle monitor, censorship, house arrest, a sham trial and, finally, political conviction." His father was under house arrest when a Supreme Court panel convicted him in September 2025 of attempting a coup to stay in office after his 2022 defeat and sentenced him to 27 years and three months; four of the five justices found him guilty, and the fifth, Luiz Fux, voted to acquit him on all charges. Jair Bolsonaro has always denied wrongdoing; a majority of the panel voted to reject his appeal in November 2025. Reuters summarized the letter as alleging "an electoral coup d'etat" by the Supreme Court and Lula; the sentence itself does not say whether "this" means the vote, the court's measures or both.
Washington's welcome
U.S. border agents admitted the family on parole, a U.S. official told The New York Times, which reported that the status was "given following orders by President Trump" and that Bolsonaro "will likely be granted permanent residency later." Trump said Wednesday, "We gave him a pass to come into the country, so we'll see — but I won't get involved," adding, "I thought they were treated very unfairly." His administration sanctioned Moraes in July 2025 under the Global Magnitsky Act, a U.S. law for punishing foreign officials accused of serious human-rights abuses or corruption, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent accusing him of "politicized prosecutions—including against former President Jair Bolsonaro"; it lifted the sanctions in December 2025, when a senior administration official said keeping them was no longer consistent with U.S. foreign-policy interests; Brazil's foreign minister said Lula had asked for the change. On Thursday Trump declined to say whether he agrees with the outcome. "I didn't take sides. I let it be. I was asked not to take sides by the president, the current president," he said, but he called the election "a great embarrassment to the people of Brazil" and "a disgrace," pointing to a fall in Brazil's markets, Al Jazeera reported. A report the U.S. Embassy in Brasília sent on Monday to U.S. agencies, the State Department among them, called Lula's win "surprising, but definitive" and said observers from the Organization of American States had "no doubt about the results," according to Folha de S.Paulo, which obtained the report (Profoundd has not seen it; quotes are translated from Folha's Portuguese). Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro wrote, "Losing an election is not grounds for asylum."
The investigations
Bolsonaro is under Supreme Court investigation in at least two cases. One, behind the passport order, examines suspected money laundering and illegal transfers of currency abroad through companies and betting platforms linked to his friend Willer Tomaz, a lawyer in the United States since August; the other concerns money from Vorcaro for "Dark Horse," a film about his father, and Bolsonaro acknowledges contacting Vorcaro about financing it; that inquiry is now handled by Justice André Mendonça. Bolsonaro denies wrongdoing in both cases. The court has imposed only precautionary measures on him, and no arrest warrant has been issued. On Tuesday two Workers' Party deputies and a deputy-elect asked Moraes to order his arrest and seek an Interpol red notice; Profoundd found no ruling by Thursday evening. Under Article 53 of the Constitution, members of Congress can be arrested only in the act of committing a crime not eligible for bail, and in 2017 the Supreme Court held that preventive detention does not apply to them; extradition would also require an arrest order, the CNBC-affiliated Times Brasil reported.
Distance at home
"I regret that he left Brazil, because he could have stayed here and proven that the accusations are not true," Lula said Wednesday. "This act of leaving Brazil is shameful." Leaders of Bolsonaro's party kept their distance from the fraud claim. "No, the PL cannot make that claim, nor can I, because there is no proof of it," said Rogério Marinho, who ran his campaign, though he defended Bolsonaro's plan to lead the opposition from abroad. On Thursday the PL's president, Valdemar Costa Neto, said of the letter, "I didn't like it," adding, "We want to move the country forward." Figueiredo wrote the same day that Bolsonaro's position is that "these elections were illegitimate, he does not recognize the result and will keep fighting to restore democracy in Brazil."
This article reflects reporting through the evening of Thursday, October 29, 2026. Sources: Flávio Bolsonaro's letter on X, first posted version and edited version, and the version first released, via SBT News and ABC Mais; Paulo Figueiredo; the Associated Press via PBS News; Reuters via NBC News, The Jerusalem Post and The Union Leader; Al Jazeera; the White House Rapid Response account; The New York Times as quoted by Political Wire; The Wall Street Journal as quoted by Joe.My.God.; O Globo's Extra on the passports; NC News on Mônica Bergamo's report, the prosecutors' criticism and the Federal Police note; SBT News on the police request; Poder360; Times Brasil on extradition, the letter's revision, Marinho and Costa Neto; Al Jazeera on Trump's Thursday remarks; Folha de S.Paulo on the embassy report; UOL on the search request; on Moraes and the Banco Master inquiry, MercoPress, AFP via the Kuwait Times, Congresso em Foco, Bem Paraná, Revista Oeste and Diário de Pernambuco; Gazeta do Povo on the sealed inquiry; Midiamax and A Crítica on Sen. Tereza Cristina; the Associated Press via PBS on the extension requests and Nunes Marques; Poder360 on the extension timeline; Itatiaia; the U.S. Treasury Department's July 30, 2025 designation and ANI via The Tribune on its December 2025 reversal; the Associated Press via CBS News and NBC News on Jair Bolsonaro's conviction and appeal; the electoral court's official first-round and runoff results files.
