Brazil's former air force commander, Lieutenant Brigadier Carlos de Almeida Baptista Júnior, has revealed in a forthcoming memoir that he walked out of a meeting in late 2022 after being handed a draft decree to invalidate President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's election victory and keep Jair Bolsonaro in power, telling the defence minister: "The air force will not take part in this." The book, titled I Said No! – An Anti-Coup Bulwark, corroborates findings from the trial that convicted Bolsonaro and several senior military figures of attempted coup — a prosecution that concluded the plot collapsed largely because two of the three armed forces chiefs refused to participate. Baptista Júnior says he decided to publish the account ahead of Brazil's upcoming presidential election to guard against history repeating itself, warning that coup-sympathising factions remain within the military and that the political climate — including potential influence from U.S. President Donald Trump on behalf of far-right candidates — makes the country's democracy no less fragile today.