Brazil’s Supreme Court orders house arrest for former President Jair Bolsonaro

Brazil’s Supreme Court on Monday (August 4, 2025) ordered the house arrest for the country’s former President Jair Bolsonaro, on trial for allegedly masterminding a coup plot to remain in office despite his defeat in the 2022 election — a case that has gripped the South American country as it faces a trade war with the Trump administration.

The trial is receiving renewed attention after U.S. President Donald Trump directly tied a 50% tariff on imported Brazilian goods to the judicial situation of Bolsonaro, a Trump ally. The U.S. leader has called the proceedings a “witch hunt.”

Prosecutors accuse Bolsonaro of heading a criminal organisation that plotted to overturn the election, including plans to kill President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and a Supreme Court justice, Alexandre de Moraes. Monday’s order followed one from the top court last month that ordered Bolsonaro to wear an electronic ankle monitor and imposed a curfew on his activities while the proceedings are underway.

A failed coup: Editorial on Bolsonaro and Brazil’s politics

Justice Moraes, who oversees the case against Bolsonaro in the court, issued the order, saying in his decision that the 70-year-old far-right leader had violated the precautionary measures imposed on him by posting content on the social media channels of his three lawmaker sons.

Moraes added that Bolsonaro, who governed Brazil between 2019 and 2022, has spread messages with “a clear content of encouragement and instigation to attacks against the Supreme Court and a blatant support for foreign intervention in the Brazilian Judiciary.”

Bolsonaro supporters plead for pardon

Tens of thousands of Bolsonaro supporters took the streets in the cities of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro on Sunday, pleading for Brazil’s congress to pardon him and hundreds of others who are under trial for their roles in the destruction of government buildings in capital Brasilia on Jan. 8, 2023.

The latest decision from the top court keeps Boslonaro under ankle monitoring, allows only family members and lawyers to visit him and seizes all mobile phones from his home.