Brazil: Ex-President Bolsonaro's Son Sentenced to Four Years over U.S. Lobbying

Brazil's Supreme Court sentenced former lawmaker Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of ex-President Jair Bolsonaro, to four years and two months in prison in absentia after finding him guilty of coercion of justice and illegally lobbying the U.S. government to interfere in his father’s coup-plot trial. 

The younger Bolsonaro, who has been living in the U.S. since last year, was convicted by a unanimous panel of justices. The Prosecutor General’s office charged him with courting interference from the Trump administration to “prevent the conviction of his father” by orchestrating for tariffs on Brazilian goods and punitive sanctions against the high court’s justices and government officials, state-run media agency Agência Brasil reported. 

In addition to the prison term, Bolsonaro will be banned from holding public office for eight years upon completion of his sentence.  

Eduardo Bolsonaro denounced the ruling as baseless and politically motivated. In a statement published on his social media, the former congressman claimed he had not been officially summoned to the trial and only learned of the conviction through the press.

“A sentence without respect for due process is null and void,” Bolsonaro wrote. “Therefore, the real objective of this nonsensical trial is only one: to remove my name from the elections.”

His father, the former far-right president, was sentenced in September last year to 27 years in prison for attempting to abolish the democratic state, leading an armed criminal organization, and other charges tied to a failed coup plot following his 2022 election defeat. 

In July 2025, the Trump administration hit Brazil with a 50% tariff on all imports over what President Donald Trump called “insidious attacks on Free Elections.” At the time, Trump demanded that Brazil halt the coup trial of Jair Bolsonaro, claiming the judicial process was politically motivated and amounted to a “witch hunt.”

Jair Bolsonaro has faced multiple corruption allegations and was named the OCCRP’s 2020 Person of the Year for enabling organized crime and corruption. In 2022, Brazil’s top electoral court fined Bolsonaro’s coalition $4 million, ruling that it had filed a bad-faith lawsuit to overturn the election results. If convicted, he could be barred from running in Brazil’s 2026 presidential election.