Brazilian Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro criticized electoral court president Kassio Nunes Marques after he said Brazil’s election was free of fraud. Flávio repeated unsupported claims that the vote was fraudulent. (Foto: Instagram)
Brazilian Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro criticized Kassio Nunes Marques, president of Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court, for saying there was no fraud in the country’s election. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Flávio said in an interview with The Washington Post published Saturday, Nov. 7. Flávio, who is in the United States after losing the election to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, again alleged without evidence that the vote was fraudulent.
Flávio had also repeated the fraud claim in an interview with The New York Times earlier in the week. Asked about Nunes Marques’ recognition of the election result, Flávio said neither he, the interviewer, viewers, nor the head of the electoral court could state with 100% certainty that there had been no fraud. Nunes Marques was appointed to Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court by former President Jair Bolsonaro, Flávio’s father.
To support his argument, Flávio said U.S. President Donald Trump agreed with him. Trump has avoided particularly forceful statements about Brazil’s election, but has called it fraudulent on multiple occasions and described it as a disgrace. Flávio also said Trump is convinced Brazil is no longer a full democracy. He compared his father’s situation with Trump’s as he explained his own decision to go to the United States, saying that “institutions still work” there.
Flávio argued that Jair Bolsonaro and Trump had followed similar paths: both alleged widespread fraud in elections they lost, and both were accused of inciting a violent attempt at insurrection, along with facing other criminal allegations. But, Flávio noted, one was imprisoned while the other returned to power.
The senator declined to explain how he left Brazil after the election. In his earlier interview with The New York Times, he said he would “take to the grave” the details of his final steps in Brazil before reaching the United States. He left Brazil two days after the election results that returned Lula to office for a fourth term.
Flávio is under investigation in several inquiries involving suspicions of money laundering, currency evasion and corruption. Those matters remain allegations under investigation.
