After Jair Bolsonaro lost his re-election bid in Brazil a few years ago, he took actions that might sound familiar: The defeated president, according to prosecutors, plotted what was effectively a coup that would’ve allowed him to remain in office. He soon after faced criminal charges and, this week, was convicted by a Supreme Court majority.
The far-right Bolsonaro, who’s embraced the “Trump of the Tropics” label, was sentenced to 27 years and three months in prison, becoming the first former president in the country’s history to be convicted for attacking democracy.
Donald Trump and his administration have already taken steps to punish Brazil for trying to hold Bolsonaro accountable, and as Reuters reported, the Republican team responded to the former president’s conviction in a predictable way.
Asked about the conviction on Thursday, Trump again praised Bolsonaro, calling the verdict ‘a terrible thing.’ ‘I think it’s very bad for Brazil,’ he added. … U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on X the court had ‘unjustly ruled,’ adding: ‘The United States will respond accordingly to this witch hunt.’
To date, no one from the Trump administration has explained why, exactly, anyone should see the case against Bolsonaro as a “witch hunt” or why the outcome was “unjust.” By all appearances, the American president sees the former Brazilian leader as a like-minded ally, and as such, the White House sees the case against him as necessarily unwarranted.
Time will tell what the U.S. administration does next (though you shouldn’t be too surprised if you start paying more for coffee), but as the dust settles on developments in Brasilia, it’s worth appreciating that, as provocative as Bolsonaro’s conviction might seem, plenty of former heads of state have been held accountable for crimes in recent years.
As regular readers might recall, all kinds of democracies have held criminal suspects accountable — even if they’re politically powerful, and even if they served in government at the highest levels.
Italy prosecuted a former prime minister. France prosecuted a former president and a former prime minister. South Africa prosecuted a former president. South Korea prosecuted a former president and is in the process of prosecuting another. Israel has prosecuted more than one former prime minister. Germany prosecuted a former president. Portugal prosecuted a former prime minister. Croatia prosecuted a former prime minister. Argentina prosecuted a former president. Austria prosecuted a former chancellor. Pakistan prosecuted a former prime minister.
These cases did not lead to violence or threats of violence. The criminal cases were tried without incident. These countries’ political systems persevered just fine, without talk of institutional breakdowns.
The cases did not turn their countries into “banana republics,” and the judiciaries in these nations saw no need to elevate their former heads of state above the law. With this in mind, two prominent scholars, Johns Hopkins’ Filipe Campante and Harvard’s Steven Levitsky, have a new op-ed in The New York Times reflecting on the bigger picture. “In both the United States and Brazil, then, elected presidents assaulted democratic institutions, seeking to maintain themselves in power after losing re-election. Both power grabs failed — initially,” they wrote. “But that’s where the two histories diverge. Americans did remarkably little to protect their democracy from the leader who had assaulted it.” “With all its flaws, Brazilian democracy is healthier today than America’s,” the professors concluded. “Keenly aware of their country’s authoritarian past, Brazil’s judicial and political authorities did not take democracy for granted. Their U.S. counterparts, by contrast, fell down on the job. Rather than undermining Brazil’s effort to defend its democracy, Americans should learn from it.” This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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