BREAKING: Flávio Bolsonaro releases statement following exit from BRAZIL:
“I address the Brazilian people and the international community as the true elected president of Brazil.
First of all, I would like to thank President Milei for his courage, sense of justice, and respect for the law, and President Trump and the wonderful American people for welcoming me. This is a land of freedoms and brothers who share the same values as the good people of my country. President Trump is a great defender of freedom of expression.
On Sunday night, I watched in horror as electoral fraud unfolded right before my eyes. The illegitimate and illegal action of Lula’s former lawyer made a mathematical impossibility possible, allowing Lula to add more than 10 million votes from the first to the second round. A decision by the STF, overriding the competence of the TSE, extended voting at the last minute, and the order only arrived after the legal voting hours had ended, when the polls were already closed. Voters were subjected to different rules. So far, the TSE has limited itself to defending the extension of voting hours and has not provided a single credible response. And the nullities are not the only problem. Throughout the entire campaign there was abuse of political and economic power and the use of the public machine in favor of reelection. These are serious facts, expressly prohibited by law, that justify the annulment of the Lula-Alckmin ticket.
The regime’s response to my questioning came quickly. As if according to a pre-planned script, seven minutes after this repugnant electoral fraud, the judge—implicated in a huge corruption scandal, directly cited in the inquiry he used to try to seize my passports, and who would very probably be in prison if they had not prevented my inauguration—set in motion the regime’s machine of political persecution. Being barred from the outset and completely suspect to initiate any judicial proceeding against me, his mere participation in procedural acts shows the extent of the arbitrariness and illegality underway.
It was not my intention to leave my homeland, but I know exactly where this is headed. This is the classic playbook of any coup d’état. The political persecution that began with my father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, and spread to thousands of other ordinary Brazilian patriots and even American citizens, has a single objective: to silence anyone who does not agree with the state of exception installed in Brazil through a Supreme Court captured by the criminal organization of the Workers’ Party.
To be clear, there is no arrest warrant against me, because I have committed no crime. What exists is a politically motivated witch hunt intended to hold me hostage and use me as blackmail to protect the corrupt judges of the Supreme Court from impeachment. This is the persecution script: seizure of passport, electronic ankle monitor, censorship, house arrest, a sham trial, and finally political conviction.
I will not subject my family to this, and my country does not deserve to go through this international embarrassment again. Faced with the politicization of the justice system in Brazil, I brought my family to the United States, where we are safe. I thank, once again, President Trump and the American government for welcoming us and giving us the legal security we no longer have in Brazil.
I want to make it clear: I did not flee Brazil. I left for Brazil’s sake. I left a state of exception so that I could be the leader my people deserve, because silenced, imprisoned, and censored, as my father is, I could not be that leadership and we would be delivered to the institutional theater of an opposition castrated and controlled by a Supreme Court full of servants of the regime.
I am not the first person who has had to fight for his own country from abroad. Rui Barbosa went into exile for confronting the arbitrariness of Floriano Peixoto and from there continued defending the law and freedom. Charles de Gaulle led Free France from London, sentenced to death by the Vichy regime, and returned to liberate his country. José Martí organized the struggle for Cuban independence from New York. In Venezuela, Juan Guaidó and Edmundo González had to leave the country for confronting the Chavista dictatorship, and María Corina Machado, even while persecuted, refused to legitimize the fraud and became a worldwide symbol of democratic resistance. All of them were treated as criminals by the regimes they faced. History called them something else.
This is only the beginning of our struggle for democracy, human rights, and freedom in Brazil. I want to say, not only to my 60 million voters, but to the Brazilian people, that I am the elected president and that the criminals who stole the election in Brazil are part of a criminal organization that has implemented a tyranny. You who longed for change—I will not abandon you. I will be the free voice and leadership of our nation.
To the Brazilian institutions, I make an appeal: this madness must end. Brazil today lives in legal chaos, corruption, and political persecution, in which the opposition is afraid to speak and the family of a former president is treated as an enemy of the state. No nation can live in peace or prosper like this. There is still time to restore the balance between the powers and return to Brazilians the confidence they have lost.
To the international community, I ask: do not normalize what is happening in Brazil. What is happening in my country today is not normal and cannot be treated as normal.
To the senators, deputies, and governors whom I helped elect, and especially to my candidate for president of the Senate, Rogério Marinho: I know that today you do not have the necessary freedom for the full exercise of political activity. That is why I will lead the opposition from here. I will say what you, there, cannot say, and I will assume the risks that you cannot run.
And to you who voted for me and dream of change: we are not defeated and we are not alone. This is only the beginning of our struggle for democracy, human rights, and freedom in Brazil. In the coming days I will regularly address the Brazilian people, and we will present a strategy to mobilize the opposition and the immense popular support we have, by all peaceful and legitimate means, to prevent Lula from consolidating a dictatorial regime in Brazil. I ask each of you to remain firm and never give up.
I left Brazil, but I have not abandoned the Brazilians. This fight did not end on October 25. It only ends when Brazil is once again a free country. And that day will come. May God bless Brazil.”