Jair Bolsonaro, the former Brazilian president accused of plotting a coup, made plans to seek political asylum in Argentina last year, Brazil’s federal police said on Wednesday, citing a document seized from his mobile phone.
The police said they had recovered a 33-page draft asylum request from the phone that was addressed to President Javier Milei of Argentina, a fellow right-wing leader. It said that Mr. Bolsonaro was suffering political persecution in Brazil, that he expected to be illegally imprisoned and that he feared for his life.
The document is not dated, but the police said it was saved on Mr. Bolsonaro’s phone in February 2024, two days after they carried out a sweeping operation that targeted the former president and about two dozen of his political allies. The police arrested some of Mr. Bolsonaro’s top aides and searched their homes and offices during that operation.
The police said it was unclear whether the asylum request had ever been sent to the Argentine authorities. But they argued that it showed Mr. Bolsonaro had devised plans to evade an inquiry into his role in an attempt to keep him in office after he lost Brazil’s 2022 presidential election.
Argentina’s embassy in Brazil did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Excerpts from the draft asylum request were included in a 170-page report from a federal police investigation into allegations that Mr. Bolsonaro and his son, a sitting congressman in Brazil who is currently in the United States, had lobbied foreign authorities with the aim of undermining Brazil’s judiciary and thwarting the case against him.
The son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, has visited the White House a number of times in recent months to seek U.S. intervention into his father’s case. Last month, President Trump cited the matter when he said he would impose 50 percent tariffs on goods from Brazil, demanding that the country drop the case against the former president, who is a Trump ally.
Mr. Bolsonaro is under house arrest as he awaits his trial, which scheduled to start on Sept. 2. Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who is overseeing the case, has ordered him to wear an ankle monitor and stay away from foreign embassies, saying Mr. Bolsonaro is a flight risk.
In a new ruling on Wednesday, Justice Moraes said Mr. Bolsonaro had repeatedly breached court orders, giving him 48 hours to clarify why he had done so and to explain the evidence suggesting he had planned to flee Brazil.