Attorney General's Office accuses Eduardo and Paulo Figueiredo of coercion to benefit Jair Bolsonaro

A month after the Federal Police submitted its final report , the Attorney General's Office charged Federal Deputy Eduardo Bolsonaro (PL-SP) and blogger Paulo Figueiredo Filho with attempting to coerce Brazilian authorities to prevent the prosecution of the coup plot. The document, signed by Attorney General Paulo Gonet, arrived at the Supreme Federal Court on Monday, the 22nd.

According to the Penal Code , the crime of coercion during legal proceedings consists of using violence or serious threats to further one's own or another's interests within a judicial, administrative, police, or arbitration proceeding. The penalty for this crime is one to four years in prison, in addition to the penalty corresponding to the violence used. It will be up to the Supreme Federal Court to decide whether or not to accept the complaint against the pair.

Jair Bolsonaro (PL), who was also the target of the investigation, was not charged. This means that the Attorney General's Office found no evidence that he was also coercing judicial authorities responsible for the coup.

In the document, Gonet claims that the defendants' strategy was based on threatening Supreme Court justices with the imposition of US sanctions. The Attorney General's Office mentions three episodes that make up the duo's crusade: the suspension of judges' visas on July 18, the imposition of economic tariffs on Brazilian products on July 9, and the use of the Magnitsky Act to sanction Alexandre de Moraes , the rapporteur of the criminal case that led to Bolsonaro's conviction for the coup plot.

The evidence cited in the complaint also includes public statements from both on their social media accounts, which point out that the actions were intended to “place the Bolsonaro family’s interests above the norms of due process and the proper ordering of justice.”

"The conversations reveal that Eduardo Bolsonaro and Paulo Figueiredo's plan to subjugate the Supreme Federal Court served the sole purpose of saving Jair Bolsonaro—and, by procedural derivation, Paulo Figueiredo—from criminal punishment. This was the sole and real motivation for all their efforts abroad. They didn't care about the shattering of Brazil's economic situation, so that their objective could be achieved."

Much of the evidence cited in the document concerns conversations obtained by the Federal Police after the former president's cell phone was seized. In one of these messages, Bolsonaro tells his son that "all or almost all" of the Supreme Court justices are concerned about the sanctions. The document also indicates that the federal deputy acted to ensure that only he and Paulo Figueiredo had access to US authorities.

"The implementation of increasing sanctions convinced the defendants that the threats and harm already inflicted were producing results in the disposition of the justices. This encouraged them to intensify their acts of coercion. They sought to make it clear to the public and to the other justices of the Supreme Federal Court that the measures they used to intimidate the justices were effective," Gonet reported in the petition.