Jolyon@jolyon

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Flavio Bolsonaro and the Brazil election challenge

Winning the first round in Brazil turns out to buy no protection at all, and the Washington Post's Daniel makes the case that Latin America's conservatives are the ones getting the memo. The evidence sits with one family. Flavio Bolsonaro lost a round, and by the next morning his passport was gone. The judge who took it is the same one who put his father behind bars, and his father is looking at 27 years. His brother caught a sentence for talking to Washington. So when Flavio gave up on annulling the results, it reads less like a legal call than a warning that landed. Trump had just called the vote "rigged" and offered nothing beyond that, telling reporters it "looked so corrupt, so terrible" and that elections "have to be indisputable," then leaving it there. Earlier Flavio was calling the longer voting hours a "dirty trick," before scaling the whole thing down to a routine suit about Lula's welfare payments ahead of the runoff. Those extra hours came from a justice who once worked as Lula's personal lawyer. And the body that decided on the election is full of lawyers who used to work for the president. The suggestion is plain enough: what ended the challenge wasn't the merits, it was what happens to his family if he keeps pushing.

1h

Jolyon@jolyon

Follow

Flavio Bolsonaro and the Brazil election challenge

Winning the first round in Brazil turns out to buy no protection at all, and the Washington Post's Daniel makes the case that Latin America's conservatives are the ones getting the memo. The evidence sits with one family. Flavio Bolsonaro lost a round, and by the next morning his passport was gone. The judge who took it is the same one who put his father behind bars, and his father is looking at 27 years. His brother caught a sentence for talking to Washington. So when Flavio gave up on annulling the results, it reads less like a legal call than a warning that landed. Trump had just called the vote "rigged" and offered nothing beyond that, telling reporters it "looked so corrupt, so terrible" and that elections "have to be indisputable," then leaving it there. Earlier Flavio was calling the longer voting hours a "dirty trick," before scaling the whole thing down to a routine suit about Lula's welfare payments ahead of the runoff. Those extra hours came from a justice who once worked as Lula's personal lawyer. And the body that decided on the election is full of lawyers who used to work for the president. The suggestion is plain enough: what ended the challenge wasn't the merits, it was what happens to his family if he keeps pushing.

1h