Brazil convicts Jair Bolsonaro's son of pursuing US help in father's legal battle

The son of jailed former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has been convicted by Brazil's highest court of pursuing US intervention during his father's coup trial last year.

Eduardo Bolsonaro, 41, was charged last year with lobbying US authorities to help the ex-president by imposing tariffs or sanctions on Brazil.

A former congressman in Brazil, Eduardo relocated to the US in 2025 before his father, who governed the country from January 2019 to December 2022, was found guilty of plotting a military coup and given a 27-year sentence.

Writing on social media on Tuesday, Eduardo called the conviction "baseless and senseless", saying the justices wanted to stop him from running for election.

He added that there was a lack of due process in the case against him, that he was never formally served and was only notified of the case through media reports.

Brazil's Supreme Court sentenced him in absentia to four years and two months in prison.

The younger Bolsonaro previously told the BBC he was living in "exile" out of fear he would be arrested if he returned to Brazil.

He has publicly lobbied for support for his father from the Trump administration, which likened the case against the former Brazilian president to a "witch hunt".

US President Donald Trump, who sees the right-wing Bolsonaro as an ally, imposed a 50% tariff on Brazil last July, a move that current Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva called "not only misguided but illogical".

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio later vowed that Washington would respond to Bolsonaro's conviction. The Trump administration had already sanctioned Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes on July 30, accusing him of abuses linked to his handling of Bolsonaro-related cases.

Lula said Brazil was willing to negotiate with the US on trade, but called sanctions targeting de Moraes an "unacceptable" interference in the country's justice system.

The US has since withdrawn the sanctions.

During Trump's first term, the US president and former Brazilian president Bolsonaro enjoyed a friendly relationship when their presidencies overlapped, and the two had met at the White House in 2019.

Both men subsequently lost presidential elections and both refused to publicly acknowledge defeat.

The elder Bolsonaro was convicted over a plot to overturn his 2022 election defeat. The case was tied to a wider effort to keep him in power, including the January 2023 storming of government buildings in Brasilia by his supporters.

"This is nothing more, or less, than an attack on a Political Opponent - Something I know much about!" Trump said at the time. In response, Bolsonaro thanked the US president for his support.