Brazil's Supreme Court has sentenced Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of imprisoned former president Jair Bolsonaro, to four years and two months in prison for coercing the country's justice system by lobbying the United States government to impose sanctions and tariffs against Brazil in connection with his father's coup trial. All four justices on the court's First Chamber voted to convict on Tuesday, also imposing a fine equivalent to roughly $31,700 and stripping Eduardo of his political rights for eight years — a blow that he says is designed to prevent him from standing in Brazil's upcoming presidential election.
Prosecutors argued that Eduardo Bolsonaro, a former member of Brazil's Chamber of Deputies who relocated to the United States in early 2025, ran a sustained lobbying campaign to persuade the administration of President Donald Trump to punish Brazilian judicial officials. The strategy bore results: Trump issued a letter last July announcing 50 percent tariffs on certain Brazilian goods, explicitly citing Jair Bolsonaro's trial as a "witch hunt" that "should end IMMEDIATELY." Trump also signed an executive order sanctioning Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes — the rapporteur on the Bolsonaro case — on grounds that he had suppressed political dissent, later extending the measures to de Moraes's family and other judicial officials. Justice Cristiano Zanin said Eduardo's conduct "clearly threatened Brazilian authorities and Brazilian citizens" and was "illegitimate and criminal," not merely a political opinion. In court, de Moraes showed video footage of Eduardo's own public statements about his lobbying work in Washington.
The defence countered that Eduardo had engaged in lawful "political interlocution" with a foreign government, exercising no actual decision-making power over US foreign policy and using no violence or serious threats — circumstances they argued were legally required to constitute coercion. Eduardo himself, who was not present at the hearing and was represented by a court-appointed public defender, said after the verdict that he had never been properly notified of the proceedings and therefore could not mount an adequate defence. He described the conviction as political persecution aimed at removing his name from the electoral ballot ahead of October's vote.
The ruling is the latest chapter in a sweeping legal saga for the Bolsonaro family. Jair Bolsonaro, who served as Brazil's far-right president from 2019 to 2022, was sentenced last September to 27 years and three months in prison for plotting a coup after narrowly losing the 2022 election to left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. He is currently serving that sentence under house arrest in Brasília on medical grounds, following a diagnosis of pneumonia that required intensive care — complications linked in part to a knife attack he survived in 2018. On Monday, police discovered a 9mm Glock pistol at his residence during a routine inspection, prompting de Moraes to demand an explanation from Bolsonaro's legal team within 24 hours.
The diplomatic backdrop has since shifted. As relations between the Lula and Trump administrations warmed, Washington relaxed its tariffs on Brazil and in December repealed the sanctions against de Moraes. Lula visited the White House in May. Still, the political stakes remain high: Eduardo's elder brother, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, is positioning himself as a presidential candidate and is projected in recent polling to face Lula in a run-off, trailing him by roughly nine percentage points. The conviction of Eduardo, who had already lost his parliamentary seat late last year for missing too many sessions, adds fresh turbulence to the Bolsonaro family's continued dominance of Brazil's political right.