The former Brazilian president is on trial at the Supreme Court, accused of attempting to stage a coup.
Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was ordered to wear an electronic ankle monitor on Friday after federal police searched his home and his party’s headquarters in Brasilia under a Supreme Court order, according to authorities.
Lawmakers from Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party said he was also ordered to stop using social media and cease communications with diplomats.
A police statement, which did not name Bolsonaro as the target of the raids, said officers carried out “two search and seizure warrants, in addition to precautionary measures other than arrest, in compliance with a decision by the Supreme Court.”
Congressman Sostenes Cavalcante, the leader of the party in Brazil’s lower house, said it was “another chapter in the persecution of conservatives and right-wing figures” in the country.
Bolsonaro, 70, is on trial at the Supreme Court, accused of attempting to stage a coup to overturn the 2022 election, which he lost to veteran progressive Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
U.S. President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social on July 7: “Brazil is doing a terrible thing on their treatment of former President Jair Bolsonaro. … I’ll be watching the WITCH HUNT of Jair Bolsonaro, his family, and thousands of his supporters, very closely.”
Two days later, Trump threatened to impose a 50 percent import tax on Brazil.
On Thursday, Lula, speaking to a crowd of students in the state of Goias, said he won’t take orders from a foreigner.
Bolsonaro posted a video on Thursday, before his social media ban, thanking Trump for his support, which he said brought him “great joy.”
– Jair Bolsonaro responde à carta de @realDonaldTrump . pic.twitter.com/Pj91AAxcHa
— Jair M. Bolsonaro (@jairbolsonaro) July 18, 2025
‘Nonexistent Crime’
In the video, Bolsonaro said he was being prosecuted for a nonexistent crime and said the authorities in Brazil wanted to detach him from the political process.
On July 15, Brazilian Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet said in a report to the Supreme Court that the “evidence is clear: the defendant acted systematically, throughout his mandate and after his defeat at the polls, to incite insurrection and the destabilization of the democratic rule of law.”
