Flávio Bolsonaro flees to Miami after losing the presidential runoff

Flávio Bolsonaro boarded a private jet in the Argentine border city of Puerto Iguazú on Tuesday evening, forty minutes after crossing into Argentina by land with his family. On Wednesday he surfaced in Miami, three days after losing Brazil's presidential runoff to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and insisted that he remained the country's legitimate president.

His first answer to defeat had been a challenge. On Sunday he said he would contest the result, citing the Supreme Federal Tribunal's order to keep polls open for two extra hours after some had already closed. By Wednesday the challenge had become a letter from Florida, in which he declared that he would lead the opposition from abroad and described the investigations pending against him as a politically motivated witch hunt.

Bolsonaro faces three cases before the STF — money laundering alongside attorney Willer Tomaz, a corruption probe into the financing of a film about his father, and a defamation suit for calling Lula corrupt. He had been ordered to surrender his passport, and with the election defeat he was expected to lose the parliamentary immunity that shielded him. Argentine migration authorities recorded the land crossing on Tuesday evening, then a private plane bound for Ecuador whose charter, the airline's head told AFP, was paid by an intermediary using a US bank account. It landed in Miami.

The route has since opened a dispute about whether a conversation took place at all. A Brazilian diplomatic source told AFP that Brasília summoned Argentina's representative on Thursday to "provide explanations" about the journey, describing the meeting as routine procedure. Argentina's foreign ministry denies that any such request was made. The two countries were already on reduced terms: Brazil recalled its ambassador from Buenos Aires in July and downgraded relations after President Javier Milei called Lula "a thief" and "corrupt."

Flávio's brother Eduardo moved to the United States last year after the Lula government moved to imprison him, and has since campaigned from Texas for American sanctions against Brazilian judges. His father, Jair Bolsonaro, is serving a 27-year sentence under house arrest, barred from public statements, with every visit requiring judicial approval — the party president Costa Neto's came from STF Justice Alexandre de Moraes. Costa Neto visited on Thursday and told reporters the father had known nothing of the flight. "He did not speak to his father. Not even Bolsonaro knew he was going."

The denial carries legal weight: any role by the elder Bolsonaro in his son's departure could alter the terms of his detention. Costa Neto added that nobody in the party had known of the plan either — and that Jair Bolsonaro, who is banned from issuing any public statement, had not approved the letter his son published from Florida.