“On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, I will be live at the Supreme Court to talk about what happened during my term and on January 8th (2023),” Bolsonaro announced Friday during an event for the conservative Liberal Party.

The alleged coup plot failed due to lack of support from military commanders, but Bolsonaro and seven others involved could face sentences of up to 43 years in prison if convicted of attempted violent abolition of the democratic rule of law and coup d’état.

The interrogations of the accused began this Monday. The first was Lieutenant Colonel Mauro Cid, a former Bolsonaro aide, who confirmed that the former president read and edited a coup d’état to prevent the inauguration of newly elected President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2023.

According to Cid, Bolsonaro personally observed and edited the draft of a decree proposing to annul the 2022 elections and halt Lula’s assumption of power, and removed several arrest warrants from the document, leaving only Justice Alexandre de Moraes of the Supreme Federal Court (STF) as a potential suspect. “He cleaned up the document, removed the arrest warrants. Only [De Moraes] would remain in prison,” the official stated.

Cid reported that at least two or three meetings were held at the Alvorada Palace, the official presidential residence in Brasília, where versions of the minutes were discussed with Bolsonaro present. Former presidential advisor Felipe Martins and an unidentified jurist participated in the meetings.

Bolsonaro’s former aide also described pressure on Armed Forces commanders to join the coup. “There was pressure to ensure that if General (Marco Antonio) Freire Gomes (then Army Commander) did not take any action (in favor of a military intervention against Lula’s inauguration), military personnel would be assigned to the command to do the job,” he revealed.

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