SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Brazil’s Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes confirmed on Friday that Senator Marcos do Val told him about an election conspiracy meeting he allegedly attended with former President Jair Bolsonaro and former lawmaker Daniel Silveira last year.
Do Val revealed on Thursday that Silveira, a close ally of Bolsonaro, tried to persuade him to join a conspiracy to overturn the far-right leader’s electoral loss, asking him to try and get Moraes to make compromising comments in a taped conversation that could lead to the judge’s arrest.
Bolsonaro had made baseless attacks on the integrity of Brazil’s electronic voting system, which Moraes – also the head of the country’s top electoral authority (TSE) – defended in decisions that the former president blamed for his defeat.
Moraes said during an event held in Lisbon that Do Val approached him to talk about the meeting. The justice said he then asked the senator to testify formalizing the allegations, but Do Val declined to.
Do Val told reporters on Thursday that Bolsonaro, narrowly defeated by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in an October vote, “sat in silence” while Silveira laid out the plot against Moraes at the meeting.
Silveira was arrested by police on Thursday on a warrant issued by Moraes, who accused him of disobeying court rulings. Bolsonaro left Brazil for Florida 48 hours before Lula took office, without ever conceding defeat.
(Reporting by Gabriel Araujo and Eduardo Simoes; Editing by Steven Grattan)
