Brazilian senator says Bolsonaro tried to coerce him into staging coup

A Brazilian senator said on Thursday that a close ally of former President Jair Bolsonaro tried to persuade the senator to join a conspiracy to overturn the far-right leader’s electoral loss last year.

Senator Marcos do Val told a news conference that he had been invited to a meeting on Dec. 9 with then-President Bolsonaro by his associate, former lawmaker Daniel Silveira. At the meeting, Silveira asked the senator to try to get the head of the electoral court to make compromising comments in a taped conversation that could lead to the judge’s arrest, Val said.

The senator told reporters that Bolsonaro “sat in silence” while Silveira laid out the plot against Justice Alexandre de Moraes, a Supreme Court judge running Brazil’s top electoral authority (TSE).