US steps up efforts to help far-right populist Bolsonaro avoid jail over 'coup plot'

The US has intensified its campaign to help Jair Bolsonaro avoid punishment for allegedly masterminding a failed coup, with the state department denouncing the decision to place Brazil's former president under house arrest.

- Tom Phillips

"Let Bolsonaro speak!" the department's bureau of western hemisphere affairs posted on Monday night after the far-right populist was confined to his mansion in the capital, Brasilia, and police seized his mobile phone.

Alexandre de Moraes, the supreme court judge overseeing the trial, said he had taken the decision as a result of what he called Bolsonaro's deliberate violation of a court order forbidding him from using social media or communicating with foreign diplomats. "Justice is blind but it isn't stupid," Moraes wrote in Monday's order.

The Trump administration has thrown its weight behind efforts to help Bolsonaro avoid a lengthy jail sentence for allegedly plotting to seize power after he lost the 2022 election to his leftwing rival, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Federal police claim the conspiracy included plans to assassinate Lula, his vice-president, Geraldo Alckmin, and Moraes.

The plot allegedly culminated on 8 January 2023, a week after Lula took power, when thousands of Bolsonaro supporters stormed congress, the supreme court and the presidential palace in what police claim was an unsuccessful attempt to start a military intervention.