Flávio Bolsonaro denies fleeing Brazil in first public statement, after declaring himself 'true president' from Miami
Flávio Bolsonaro, son of jailed ex-president Jair, abandoned his demand for annulment of the result by Monday, pledging instead to lead the opposition.Flávio Bolsonaro routed his escape flight through Guayaquil, Ecuador, to avoid Brazilian airspace after the Supreme Court cancelled his passports for ignoring a deadline to surrender them.
Flávio Bolsonaro, the 45-year-old Brazilian senator who lost Sunday's presidential election to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva by around 4.5 million votes, issued his first public statement denying he had fled Brazil, walking back an earlier open letter in which he declared himself "the true president of Brazil" before deleting it and replacing it with a version calling himself "the leader my people deserve." He thanked President Trump and Argentine leader Javier Milei for helping him travel via Argentina and Ecuador before arriving in Miami aboard a private Gulfstream jet, with his wife and two teenage daughters. Brazil cancelled his passports amid a money-laundering investigation, and the US granted visas to him and his family.
Trump told reporters 'we gave him a pass to come into the country' but declined to engage with Bolsonaro's disputed electoral fraud claims, calling it 'a very strange election'.
Brazil's three largest newspapers — Folha de S.Paulo, O Globo and O Estado de S.Paulo — each characterised Bolsonaro's original declaration as 'coup-mongering'.
Bolsonaro's own party has recognised Lula's victory, as have Brazil's federal electoral court, international observers and global leaders.
