Brazil's Bolsonaro drafted Argentina asylum request, police allege

The letter had been saved on Bolsonaro's cell phone in February of last year but it's unclear whether it had been sent

Brazilian ex-President Jair Bolsonaro drafted a letter to Argentine President Javier Milei to request political asylum, federal police said on Wednesday.

The letter had been saved on Bolsonaro's cell phone in February of last year, two days after his passport was seized, according to police. It was unclear whether it had been sent to Milei.

An Argentine government source told Reuters that Milei's office had not received a letter.

The document was part of the final police report that formally accused Bolsonaro and his son, Eduardo, of working to interfere in an ongoing legal process in which the former Brazilian president is on trial for plotting a coup. The trial is set to start in September.

The police also found an audio from Bolsonaro asking Martin de Luca, a lawyer for US President Donald Trump's Trump Media & Technology Group and video-sharing platform Rumble to review a social media post that Bolsonaro was preparing last month with compliments toward Trump.

"The audio attributed to Jair Bolsonaro demonstrates that the former president acts in a subordinate manner to the interests of foreign agents," the police report said.

Bolsonaro was put under house arrest this month after Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes found the former president failed to comply with restraining orders imposed on him for allegedly courting Trump's interference in the case.

Legal representatives for Bolsonaro did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

De Luca said in a statement on Wednesday evening that he had been targeted for "standing up to Alexandre de Moraes" and that his correspondence was routine legal guidance.

"Offering feedback on a short public note or transmitting a public court filing is entirely ordinary. Yet these routine actions are now twisted into conspiracy theories," de Luca said.

In a post on X, the younger Bolsonaro, a Brazilian congressman who moved to the US and has been advocating in Washington on behalf of his father, said his work in the US was never aimed at interfering in any ongoing legal process in Brazil.

Trump has referred to Bolsonaro's trial as a "witch hunt" and called it grounds for a 50 percent tariff on Brazilian goods, while the US Treasury targeted Moraes with financial sanctions.

Rumble has been suspended in Brazil since February after a decision from Brazil's Supreme Court, which said the social media platform did not comply with court orders. The firm is suing Moraes before a US court, together with Trump Media.

In a Supreme Court decision based on the police report, Moraes gave Bolsonaro's lawyers 48 hours to clarify his repeated failure to comply with the restraining orders and his flight risk.

Last year, The New York Times published security footage that showed Bolsonaro had spent two nights at the Hungarian embassy in Brasilia. Moraes later closed an investigation into whether he sought asylum, citing lack of evidence.