Eduardo Bolsonaro made an unexpected announcement on Tuesday, March 18. The 40-year-old son of Brazil's former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2023), and a very serious candidate to succeed his father, announced in a video posted online that he was "taking leave" of his term as a federal lawmaker to move to the US, where he has already been residing for several weeks and where he intends to seek "asylum," as he told Folha de Sao Paulo on Wednesday.

Bolsonaro justified his decision by the actions taken by Alexandre de Moraes, judge at the Federal Supreme Court (STF), in charge of the main investigations against the Brazilian far right, and whom he accuses of wanting to imprison him. "I will not submit to the state of exception or its dirty tricks!," the far-right politician stated, calling the magistrate a "psychopath" and the federal police the "Gestapo."

Nostalgic for the dictatorship, a self-confessed misogynist, a conspiracy theorist, a loudmouth and a gun enthusiast, Eduardo is, of all Jair Bolsonaro's sons, the one who most resembles him. Nicknamed "Number 3" (because he's the third child), the Sao Paulo congressman was seen as a more than serious successor to his father, who was sentenced in 2023 to eight years' ineligibility for his attacks on Brazil's democratic system and banned from standing in the 2026 presidential election.

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