According to his lawyer, former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has applied for a six-month tourist visa for the United States. In an email to the Reuters news agency, his lawyer Felipe Alexandre wrote that the ex-president submitted the application on Friday. He will remain in the US while it is decided. “He wants to take some time off, clear his head and enjoy being a tourist in the US for a few months,” Alexandre wrote. Bolsonaro will then decide how to proceed. The US State Department declined to provide information, citing privacy concerns.
Bolsonaro flew to Florida two days before his term ended on January 1. The right-wing politician had lost the presidential election against the leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro’s supporters later stormed Congress, the Supreme Court and the presidential palace, demanding a military coup. They didn’t want to accept Bolsonaro’s election defeat by Lula.
Since the unrest, political responsibility for the riots has been discussed. The Supreme Court also approved investigations into whether Bolsonaro incited the anti-democracy protests. The right-wing ex-president is accused of having posted a video and deleted it a short time later, in which he questioned the legality of the presidential elections in Brazil in October and thus publicly called for a crime. Although the post was not made before but during the riots, Bolsonaro’s role should be investigated, the deputy attorney general said.