(PresidentialHill.com)- Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s ex-president, announced on Saturday that he would return home sometime in a few weeks to face trial. Bolsonaro made his first public declaration about moving back to Brazil during a rally at an evangelical church in Florida.
One of Bolsonaro’s sons, Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, recently told Brazilian media that he had no idea when his father would return. The son said that his dad was “relaxing.”
There has been much discussion in recent weeks about when Bolsonaro would return to Brazil, where he is the target of many investigations investigating allegations of corruption.
Since December 31st, the day before his leftist opponent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was sworn in as Brazil’s current president, the right-wing politician has been in the United States.
The right-wing group Yes Brazil USA hosted a rally Saturday night for Brazilian ex-pats supporting Bolsonaro. The event was conducted exclusively in Portuguese. A majority of attendees applauded Bolsonaro the whole time.
On January 31st, his one-month diplomatic visa expired, and he was no longer allowed to remain in the United States. When he and his wife finally departed Florida last month, they brought a small army of presidential aides.
Recently, Bolsonaro’s lawyers disclosed to Brazilian media that they had requested a tourist visa to prolong their client’s visit to the United States.
Bolsonaro lost the unique legal protection that had previously required any trial to be brought in the Supreme Court, a first in his more than a three-decade political career as a legislator and then as president.
Only last week, four probes against Bolsonaro that had been pending in the Supreme Court were transferred to trial court.
With parallels to Donald Trump, Bolsonaro’s participation in encouraging the unrest on Jan. 8 by his followers, who surged into government offices in Brasilia demanding his election loss to Lula be annulled, is one of the topics of investigation.
Those who came to Bolsonaro’s defense in the capital from across Brazil were met with a massive rally that investigators are trying to figure out who planned and funded.
The Brazilian government is looking into who incited the violence and who paid for thousands from around Brazil to converge on the capital city of Brasilia.
