The defeated Brazilian candidate arrived in Florida on Wednesday with his family after crossing into Argentina, then issued a letter repeating unsupported fraud claims that Brazil's institutions reject.
Brazilian senator Flávio Bolsonaro landed at Miami's Opa-locka Executive Airport on Wednesday morning with his wife and two daughters, three days after losing Brazil's presidential runoff to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who won with about 51.8 percent of the vote to his 48.2 percent. Argentine migration authorities said the family crossed into Argentina by land late on Tuesday night and took off on a private jet bound for Guayaquil, Ecuador, before continuing to Florida; the Guardian and BBC, citing flight-tracking and eyewitness accounts, reported the family stepping off the plane at about 9:30 a.m. local time. He said nothing to reporters and left under umbrellas in a vehicle escorted by police.
Hours after arriving, Bolsonaro published a letter casting himself as the victim of political persecution and repeating claims of electoral fraud for which no evidence has been offered. The Guardian reported that an early version called him Brazil's 'true president' before it was deleted and replaced with one describing him as 'the leader of Brazil'. Brazil's electoral court, its supreme court and the heads of both legislative chambers have rejected the fraud claims, and his own Liberal Party has said it recognises the result. In the letter he thanked Argentine president Javier Milei and US president Donald Trump; Trump told reporters that the US had given him a pass to enter but that he would not get involved, calling it 'a very strange election'.
The flight follows a Supreme Court order, issued by Justice Alexandre de Moraes after the vote, for Bolsonaro to surrender his passports in a money-laundering and currency-evasion investigation; Brazilian authorities cancelled the documents when the deadline passed, and the US State Department said it would issue visas to him and his family. Lula called the departure 'shameful', while Bolsonaro has denied wrongdoing. The video attached to this article is a DW News report from the Miami airport on his arrival; it is news reporting of the event, not independent confirmation of every claim above, which rests on the BBC, Guardian and Al Jazeera reporting.
