Brazil’s Supreme Court on June 16 convicted former lawmaker Eduardo Bolsonaro, a son of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, of courting interference from the Trump administration in his father’s trial last year for a coup plot.
A panel of four judges unanimously approved the conviction of Eduardo—who moved to the United States in 2025, before his father went on trial—and sentenced him to four years and two months in jail. He now risks arrest if he returns to Brazil.
Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who also oversaw the former president’s coup attempt case, said Eduardo Bolsonaro’s job as a federal lawmaker “is not to lobby overseas against his own country.” De Moraes and his wife were sanctioned by the U.S. government in July 2025.
Lawyers for Eduardo Bolsonaro disputed the verdict, saying there was not enough evidence to convict him.
Brazil’s Prosecutor General’s Office had charged him with courting U.S. authorities to help his father’s case by imposing sanctions on the court’s justices and tariffs on Brazilian goods last year. Both the tariffs and the sanctions were later scaled back.
“The former federal deputy is accused of orchestrating sanctions by the U.S. government against the Brazilian economy and against ministers of the STF [Supreme Federal Court], with the aim of preventing or influencing the trial of the criminal action against his father, former president Jair Bolsonaro, for coup d’état and attempted abolition of the democratic rule of law,” the Public Prosecutor’s Office (MPF) said in a statement.
“In reiterating the accusations, Deputy Attorney General Antônio Edílio Magalhães Teixeira recalled that the defendant boasted about the sanctions in several videos published on the internet,” said the MPF statement. “His actions are also proven by data extracted from Jair Bolsonaro’s phone, seized by order of the STF.”
In a June 16 post on X, Eduardo, who has said that he and his family are being persecuted by Brazil’s Supreme Court, wrote that he had not been notified about the legal process.
Eduardo—who was stripped of his seat in the lower house of Brazil’s congress in December 2025 after he missed more than a third of the deliberative sessions—said the Brazilian government had not sent a summons to his address, which he says they know, “in accordance with the law.”
“Any sentence without respect for due legal process is null, and after so many international defeats, even Moraes knows that,” Eduardo said.
The ruling makes Eduardo Bolsonaro ineligible to run for public office in Brazil for eight years. He said that was the real motive of the trial.
Another son, Flávio Bolsonaro—who is hoping to stand in Brazil’s presidential elections in October—met with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House last month.
Eduardo said, “I have confidence in the restoration of Brazilian democracy with the victory of Flávio Bolsonaro, which will allow the hundreds of exiles to finally return to their homeland.”
Jair Bolsonaro was elected president in October 2018, and narrowly lost an election four years later to the Workers’ Party candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, or Lula, who had been president from Jan. 1, 2003 to Jan. 1, 2011.
When the former president went on trial—accused of attempting to overturn the election result and regain power after his supporters protested in the capital, Brasilia—last year, Trump criticized the Brazilian government over its treatment of the former president.
“Brazil is doing a terrible thing in its treatment of former President Jair Bolsonaro,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social in July 2025.
“I’ll be watching the WITCH HUNT of Jair Bolsonaro, his family, and thousands of his supporters, very closely. … LEAVE BOLSONARO ALONE!”
On July 9, Trump sent a letter to the Brazilian government in which he said its treatment of Bolsonaro was an “international disgrace,” warned them of 50 percent tariffs, and posted a copy on Truth Social.
Imposition of Tariffs
The Trump administration placed a 40 percent tariff on numerous Brazilian products, effective early August 2025, in addition to existing reciprocal tariffs.
In September 2025, Brazil’s Supreme Court convicted the elder Bolsonaro of attempting to overturn the government and sentenced him to 27 years in prison.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio immediately condemned the decision and said the U.S. government “will respond accordingly,” without specifying what actions might be taken.
The U.S. tariffs on Brazil were later scaled back.
In its statement, the Brazilian public prosecutor’s office said exports of Brazilian products to the United States fell from $3.82 billion in July 2025 to $2.76 billion in August 2025, the first month of the new tariff regime.
It also said the sanctions on de Moraes were “withdrawn after diplomatic negotiations between the governments of Brazil and the US.”
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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