Brazil Indicts Jair Bolsonaro for Allegedly Using Fake Coronavirus Vaccine Card

The government of Brazil indicted conservative former President Jair Bolsonaro on Tuesday on charges of conspiracy and inserting false data into government information systems, accusing him of falsifying proof of ingestion of a Wuhan coronavirus vaccine to travel to the United States.

If prosecutors use the indictment to formally file charges, Bolsonaro may face up to 12 years in prison.

The indictment is the latest legal action against Bolsonaro by the government of socialist convicted felon President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who narrowly defeated Bolsonaro in the 2022 presidential election. Bolsonaro supporters decried the election as unfair citing the nebulous circumstances under which the Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF), the nation’s highest court, overturned the multiple convictions against Lula on charges of corruption during his previous two terms as president, allowing him to run again. The Armed Forces of Brazil added to concerns about election integrity by publishing a statement in which it “did not exclude the possibility of the existence of fraud or inconsistency in the electronic voting machines or in the 2022 electoral process.”

Following Lula’s inauguration, the Brazilian government banned Bolsonaro from holding public office until 2030, launched multiple police raids against Bolsonaro and his allies, and seized his passport to prevent him from leaving the country.

The charges revealed on Tuesday stem from Bolsonaro’s last departure from the country, a prolonged visit to the United States from December 2022 through March 2023. At the time, the administration of leftist President Joe Biden maintained a ban on foreign nationals entering the United States without proof that they had ingested one of several approved Wuhan coronavirus vaccine products. Bolsonaro has for years vocally opposed the use of novel vaccines against coronavirus and said that he personally would not take one as he had already recovered from a coronavirus infection.

Brazilian police officers raided Bolsonaro’s home in May, claiming to have evidence that Bolsonaro used false vaccine cards to get himself and his 12-year-old daughter Laura into America. His wife, former first lady Michelle Bolsonaro, reportedly consumed a vaccine product. Police also raided the home of top Bolsonaro aide Lieutenant Colonel Mauro Cid, among several others around the former president.

Brazilian police indicted Bolsonaro along with 16 other people. According to the Brazilian newspaper O Globo, Cid procured a plea bargain agreement after telling police that Bolsonaro found out he had access to vaccine cards and ordered him to print illegitimate vaccination proof cards for himself and his daughter. He claimed that he printed the vaccine cards and gave them to Bolsonaro in person.

O Globo reported that the police indictment claimed that it had found evidence that the IP address accessing the Brazilian government’s health database to modify information regarding the Bolsonaros’ vaccine status is affiliated with the Planalto Palace, the office of the president of the republic. The issuing of the documents, it continued, was apparently done through Cid’s phone. The information appeared in the system days before Bolsonaro traveled to Florida in December 2022.

Bolsonaro has not made any public statements on the indictments at press time. In May, following the police raids related to the investigation, Bolsonaro said that he was “surprised” at the allegations because he had never claimed to be vaccinated.

“I have never been asked for a vaccination card anywhere; there is no tampering on my part,” Bolsonaro told reporters at the time. “There isn’t. I didn’t take the vaccine and that’s it. I never denied that. There were people who pressured me to take the vaccine. Yes, natural. I decided not to take it because I read the Pfizer “‘leaflet'”.

“I did not take the vaccine,” Bolsonaro repeated. “A personal decision of mine — after reading the Pfizer package insert, I decided not to take it.”

“My wife’s vaccine card was also photographed, she took the vaccine in the United States, from Janssen [Johnson & Johnson]. And the other, my daughter, Laura, 12 years old, didn’t take the vaccine either. She has a medical report regarding that,” Bolsonaro asserted.

Bolsonaro was publicly rejecting the concept of a coronavirus vaccine months before the debut of the mRNA-based vaccine products from the companies Pfizer and Moderna.

“I’m telling you, I’m not going to take it. It’s my right,” he said in November 2020. “I’m healed from Covid. I have antibodies, no problems.”

During a Congressional hearing in Washington this month, Bolsonaro’s son Eduardo Bolsonaro, a Congressman himself, told American lawmakers that, under Lula, Brazil is under threat of “turning into a Cuba or a Venezuela.”

“Today, unfortunately, I live in my own movie about the gulag. My father is now persecuted and slandered in various ways, and as in any tyranny, the limit of the ridiculous no longer exists,” the younger Bolsonaro said.

“We are living this right now and with not even a single word from the Biden Administration, State Department, or any governmental authority from the homeland of democracy — the United States of America,” he continued. “Brazil, unfortunately, is not a democracy anymore.”

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