Michael Knowles

TRANSLATION: I address the Brazilian people and the international community as the leader of Brazil. First of all, I wanted to thank President Milei for his courage, sense of justice, and legality, and President Trump and the wonderful American people for welcoming me. This is a land of freedoms and brothers who share the same values as the good people of my country. President Trump is a great defender of freedom of expression. On Sunday night, I watched in astonishment as an electoral fraud took shape before my eyes. The illegitimate and illegal action of Lula’s former lawyer allowed a mathematical impossibility to become reality and Lula to add more than 10 million votes from the first to the second round. A decision by the STF, made over and above the competence of the TSE, extended voting at the last minute, and the order only arrived after the end of the legal hours, when the ballot boxes were already closed. Voters were subjected to different rules. So far, the TSE has limited itself to defending the extension of the hours and there is not even a single credible response. And the nullities are not the only problem. Throughout the entire campaign, there was abuse of political and economic power and use of the public machine in favor of reelection. These are serious facts, expressly prohibited by law, that justify the annulment of the Lula-Alckmin ticket. The regime’s response to my questioning came quickly. As if according to a previously prepared plan, seven minutes after this repugnant electoral fraud, the judge, implicated in an immense corruption scandal, directly cited in the inquiry he used to try to seize my passports, and who most likely would be in prison if they had not prevented my inauguration, set in motion the regime’s machine of political persecution. Being barred from the outset and completely suspect to initiate any judicial proceeding against me, his mere participation in procedural acts shows the extent of the arbitrariness and illegality underway. It was not my intention to leave my homeland, but I know exactly where this is going. This is the classic playbook of any coup d’état. The political persecution that began with my father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, and spread to thousands of other ordinary Brazilian patriots and even American citizens, has a single objective: to silence anyone who does not agree with the state of exception installed in Brazil, through a Supreme Court packed by the petista criminal organization. To be clear, there is no arrest warrant against me, because I have not committed any crime. What exists is a politically motivated witch hunt, which aimed to place me as a hostage and object of blackmail to protect the corrupt judges of the Supreme Court from impeachment. This is the script of the persecution: seizure of passport, electronic ankle monitor, censorship, house arrest, sham trial, and finally political conviction. I will not subject my family to this and my country does not deserve to go through this international embarrassment again. Faced with the political instrumentalization of Justice in Brazil, I brought my family to the United States, where we are safe. I thank, once again, President Trump and the American government for welcoming us and giving us the legal security that we no longer have in Brazil. I want to make it clear: I did not flee Brazil, I left for Brazil, I left a regime of exception to be able to be the leader that my people deserve, because silenced, imprisoned and censored, as my father is, I could not be that leadership and we would be handed over to the institutional theater of an opposition castrated and controlled by a Supreme Court full of servants of the regime. Page 1 of 2