Flávio Bolsonaro reaches Miami and denies fleeing Brazil after election defeat

Brazilian senator Flávio Bolsonaro arrived at Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport with his wife and daughters on Wednesday after travelling through Argentina and Ecuador. In a letter published after his arrival, he denied fleeing Brazil and said he would lead the opposition to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva from the United States.

“I did not flee Brazil; I left for the sake of Brazil,” he wrote, in translation from Portuguese. Bolsonaro said he had taken his family to the US because he believed Brazil’s judiciary was being used against him. An earlier version of the letter had called him the true elected president of Brazil, according to CNN Brasil and Gazeta do Povo; he removed that description before republishing it.

Bolsonaro had led the first round of voting, but Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court says Lula won Sunday’s run-off by 64,256,232 votes to 59,826,041 — a margin of 4,430,191. Bolsonaro’s party and running mate have recognised the result, CNN Brasil reported.

The senator alleges electoral fraud, linking his claim in part to a late extension of voting and Lula’s gain of more than 10 million votes between the two rounds. The electoral court acknowledges that the extension, ordered for polling stations still open at 17:00, caused operational difficulties. But it says 34,393 votes were registered after 17:00 within Brazil. Even if every one of those votes had gone to Lula, they would account for less than 1% of his winning margin. That comparison addresses the suggested effect of late voting, not every allegation in Bolsonaro’s letter.

Brazil’s federal police said they had sought a court order to seize Bolsonaro’s passports and prevent him leaving the country. After the order, his Brazilian passports were cancelled, and he did not hand over any passports of other nationalities within the required 24 hours, the force said. Police are investigating the circumstances of his non-compliance, but stressed that restrictions on travel documents do not, by themselves, legally make someone a fugitive or authorise an arrest.