As far right former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro's imprisonment approaches, his allies have made a last ditch effort to keep him out of jail. Our correspondent Brian Mier has more.
00:00As far right, former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro's imprisonment approaches, his allies have made a last-ditch effort to keep him out of jail.
00:09Congressman Maramir has more.
00:13Brazilian Supreme Court Minister Luis Fux shocked the nation when, after showing no prior warnings,
00:19he became the only judge in the court's five-member first panel to vote against a guilty verdict for ex-president Jair Bolsonaro and his seven co-defendants.
00:28In the trial for the 2023 military coup attempt, now he surprised everyone again.
00:38I told my esteemed friend of many years, Supreme Court Chief Justice Luis Barroso, that I wanted to move to the court's second panel.
00:46So we agreed that I would make this request.
00:49In fact, this type of thing is very normal in our court.
00:52Justice Carmen Lucia was in the second panel and she moved to the first one, for example,
00:57and now this opportunity has come up with Justice Barroso's retirement.
01:04The Supreme Court's second panel has two staunch Bolsonaro allies, Andrei Mendoza and Nunes Marquez.
01:12With Fux, it would form a three-member pro-Bolsonaro majority.
01:17In theory, this opens room for Bolsonaro's defense lawyers to appeal for review of the ruling and possible annulment.
01:23But there are two obstacles.
01:25First, they need to meet strict legal requirements to file, which they don't appear to have.
01:30And second, the appeal has to be authorized by the president of the second panel.
01:34The president of the second group is Hussise Gilmar Mendes,
01:41who can simply refuse to review the appeal and enable one Supreme Court group to annul the ruling of another group.
01:54I don't believe the Supreme Court will install a crisis for itself like this.
01:59A politicized Supreme Court second panel may cause a lot of headaches for the Lula administration in the future,
02:08but Jair Bolsonaro's dream of walking away as a free man seems to be slipping through his fingers.
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