Olivia of Troye - Brazil Is Prosecuting Its Coup-Plotter. America Put Ours Back in Office.
I met Jair Bolsonaro in September 2019 during the United Nations General Assembly in New York. At the time, I was serving as Vice President Mike Pence’s homeland security and counterterrorism advisor, and, little-known fact, also as his Latin America and United Nations advisor. (Imagine that: he actually put a Latina fluent in Spanish on this portfolio… in a White House where I was clearly not welcomed by Stephen Miller and his ilk.) Bolsonaro, for his part, had met with Donald Trump at the White House earlier that year and was still in his honeymoon phase on the world stage, selling himself as a reformer who would align Brazil more closely with the U.S.
That same fall, Patricia Campos de Mello, one of Brazil’s leading journalists and a recipient of the International Press Freedom Award, visited the White House with a small group of fellow honorees. They met with Vice President Pence at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, just steps from the West Wing. She raised concerns about Bolsonaro’s attacks on the press in Brazil. Pence asked whether he had condemned those attacks. Her answer was no; in fact, he had encouraged them. The irony of Pence asking this, in a room full of reporters honored for their courage, wasn’t lost on me. After all, Pence was serving under a president who relentlessly attacked the media at home, even going so far as to strip CNN’s (at the time) Jim Acosta of his press badge.
Fast-forward six years. Today, Bolsonaro is on trial in Brazil’s Supreme Court for something even more serious: attempting to stage a coup to remain in power. And Trump is back in office, still attacking the press. Still plotting on future elections.
The charges are staggering. Prosecutors say they have evidence of a draft decree authorizing a coup, and even allegations of assassination plots against President Lula, his Vice President, and a Supreme Court justice. Bolsonaro faces up to 40 years in prison. For the first time in Brazil’s history, a former president is being tried for trying to dismantle democracy itself.
https://www.livingitwitholiviatroye.com/p/brazil-is-prosecuting-its-coup-plotter