Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro gestures from his residence in Brasilia, Brazil, on Sept. 3, 2025. Credit – Sergio Lima—AFP/Getty Images
Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s former President, was sentenced to 27 years and three months in prison on Thursday after the country’s Supreme Court convicted him of attempting a coup to stay in power despite losing in the 2022 election.
It’s not the first time Brazil has convicted a former President, but it was the first time an ex-leader in Brazil faced coup-related charges, despite the country having experienced at least 15 coups and coup attempts since the end of its monarchy in 1889.
It’s a “watershed moment in Brazil’s history,” said Chief Justice Luís Roberto Barroso after the ruling.
Bolsonaro’s verdict has driven a wedge into an already polarized Brazil. The 70-year-old far-right populist has repeatedly denied accusations that he attempted to overthrow the government, decrying the case as political persecution. His backers took to the streets in the capital Brasilia, Rio de Janeiro, and São Paulo in recent days to protest the upcoming verdict and the current government, while in other cities, supporters of incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva also took to the streets in counterprotests defending Lula and seeking Bolsonaro’s imprisonment.
The ruling also prompted reaction from the U.S. Speaking to reporters at the White House after the ruling, President Donald Trump, who has called Bolsonaro a friend and his prosecution a “witch hunt,” said the Brazilian Supreme Court’s decision “surprising.”
“I thought he was a good President,” Trump said. “It’s very much like they tried to do with me but they didn’t get away with it at all.”
Bolsonaro had earned the nickname “Trump of the Tropics” for his similarities with the U.S. President, and Trump often touted their friendly relations and compared their political struggles. Trump and his allies faced their own legal battles for alleged election interference after the 2020 election, and while federal charges against Trump were dropped, a Georgia election racketeering conspiracy case against him is technically still pending.
Trump has used his influence to try to save allies, including Bolsonaro as well as Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, from persecution in their respective countries. He announced a 50% tariff on Brazilian goods in July, and his Administration sanctioned Justice Alexandre de Moraes, the presiding judge in Bolsonaro’s criminal trial, and revoked the U.S. visas of de Moraes, his allies and his immediate family members to ramp up pressure against Brazilian authorities.
Bolsonaro’s son Eduardo, a lawmaker on a leave of absence in Brazil, moved to the U.S. earlier this year to urge the White House and Republicans to intervene in his father’s case as well as to avoid imprisonment himself.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio criticized de Moraes after Jair Bolsonaro’s conviction. “The political persecutions by sanctioned human rights abuser Alexandre de Moraes continue, as he and others on Brazil’s supreme court have unjustly ruled to imprison former President Jair Bolsonaro,” he posted on X after the ruling. “The United States will respond accordingly to this witch hunt.”
Here’s what to know.
Why Bolsonaro was convicted
Bolsonaro, a former military captain who served as Brazil’s President from 2019 to 2022, was found guilty on five counts: attempting a coup after losing to Lula; taking part in an armed criminal organization; attempting violent abolition of the democratic rule of law; causing damage to government property; and causing damage to protected property.
The case stemmed from a charge filed in February by Prosecutor General Paulo Gonet Branco, following a recommendation by federal police to file criminal charges against Bolsonaro in November 2024. Prosecutors accused Bolsonaro and his allies of carrying out several actions from 2021 to 2023 that would ensure his grip on power: these allegations included undermining electronic voting machines before the elections, and planning out a coup that would have Supreme Court justices arrested, Lula poisoned, and his Vice President Geraldo Alckmin assassinated.
Prosecutors added that after losing to Lula, Bolsonaro and his team tried to overturn the results by allegedly urging their supporters to mobilize in Brasília on Jan. 8, 2023, where they swarmed and vandalized the core executive, judiciary, and legislative federal government buildings.
During his trial, Bolsonaro denied masterminding a coup attempt, but he admitted that he and his officials had studied constitutionally allowed “alternatives” to stay in power, including deploying military forces and possibly declaring a “state of siege” commonly used to curtail civil liberties amid crises.
The five members of the Supreme Court’s First Panel decided on the case. De Moraes, who ordered the shutdown of X in the country in 2024 and previously jailed some of Bolsonaro’s supporters, was the first to cast his vote on Tuesday, saying that the “the leader of the criminal group makes it clear, in his own voice, publicly, that he would never accept a defeat at the polls, a democratic defeat in the elections, that he would never comply with the people’s will.” The other justices Carmen Lúcia Rocha, Cristiano Zanin, and Flávio Dino, also voted to convict Bolsonaro.
Only one justice on the panel, Luiz Fux, voted to acquit Bolsonaro on all charges. In a speech that lasted more than 13 hours explaining his dissenting vote, Fux said that there was not enough evidence to convict the far-right leader and that he was not responsible for the Jan. 8 attack on government buildings.
Bolsonaro isn’t the only one to face sentencing; some of the others whom prosecutors said make up the “crucial core of the criminal organization” also received sentences. Lt. Col. Mauro Cid, a top Bolsonaro aide who eventually cooperated with investigations in exchange for leniency, was sentenced to two years in an “open regime” setup similar to a halfway house. Gen. Walter Braga Netto, Bolsonaro’s former defense minister and running mate in 2022, was sentenced to 26 years in prison. Adm. Almir Garnier Santos, a former commander of the Navy during Bolsonaro’s term, was sentenced to 24 years in prison, Gen. Augusto Heleno, former Institutional Security Secretary, was sentenced 21 years in prison, and former defense minister Gen. Paulo Sérgio Nogueira was sentenced to 19 years in prison.
A history of presidential convictions
While the conviction on a coup charge is historic, Bolsonaro joins two others who have been convicted of crimes out of the last seven Brazilian Presidents.
Fernando Collor de Mello, who served from 1990 to 1992, was convicted on corruption charges in 2023. Collor was the first Brazilian President elected by popular vote after 21 years of military rule. But he was impeached in 1992 for corruption, resigning before the Brazilian Senate could, in effect, remove him.
Lula, who first served from 2003 to 2010, was caught in Brazil’s large-scale Operation Car Wash anti-corruption probe that began in 2014. Three years later, he was sentenced to nearly 10 years in prison for receiving 3.7 million Brazilian reais (at the time about $1.1 million) worth of bribes from a construction firm for his beachhouse apartment. Lula was imprisoned in 2018, but he was released in November 2019 after the Supreme Court ruled that defendants can’t be jailed before exhausting appeal options.
What comes next for Bolsonaro
Bolsonaro has been under house arrest since August 4.
But his conviction does not mean he’ll immediately be sent to prison. Bolsonaro’s team can appeal the ruling before the Supreme Court’s full 11 justices, and it’s unclear if he will actually be sent to prison, given his health struggles.
His defense team said they will appeal the ruling, according to a note posted on X by lawyer Fabio Wajngarten, claiming that Bolsonaro’s sentence is “absurdly excessive and disproportionate.”
The ruling may also push Bolsonaro’s allies in Brazil’s largely conservative Congress to seek some form of amnesty for him. Bolsonaro’s son Eduardo is among those leading the charge. “It is time to do nothing less than what is correct, just,” he posted on X.
Meanwhile, the embattled former President has said he will run against Lula again next year, even as Brazil’s electoral court banned him from seeking public office for eight years until 2030 because of statements that undermined the previous election. Some expect Bolsonaro may choose a political heir, such as his wife or one of his sons, who can challenge Lula in his place in the 2026 general election.
Bolsonaro’s eldest son, Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, posted on social media after his father’s sentence: “History will show that we are on the right side!”
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