Bolsonaro, Brazil’s Former President, Ordered to Wear Ankle Monitor Before Trial

Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered Jair Bolsonaro, the former president, to stay home most hours, defying President Trump’s demands that charges against him be dropped.

Brazil’s Supreme Court on Friday ordered former President Jair Bolsonaro to wear an ankle monitor, stay home during most hours and stay away from foreign embassies because it said he was a flight risk after lobbying President Trump to intervene in his legal troubles.

The orders are a sharp escalation of Brazil’s sudden feud with Mr. Trump over the legal case against Mr. Bolsonaro, who could end up in prison this year on charges that he attempted a coup after losing the 2022 election.

Mr. Trump has threatened 50 percent tariffs starting Aug. 1 on Brazilian goods, in part to pressure Brazilian authorities to end what he has called a “witch hunt” targeting Mr. Bolsonaro.

Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has pushed back aggressively, saying that Brazil will not capitulate to an American president he accuses of wanting to be an “emperor.”

On Thursday night, Mr. Trump posted online that the charges against Mr. Bolsonaro should be dropped. On Friday morning, Brazilian federal police raided Mr. Bolsonaro’s home and office.

Alexandre de Moraes, a Brazilian Supreme Court justice who has overseen investigations into Mr. Bolsonaro for years, said he had ordered Mr. Bolsonaro to remain under house arrest during nights and weekends and barred him from any contact with foreign officials.

Mr. Bolsonaro’s lawyer, Paulo Cunha Bueno, said the court also barred the former president from using social media or communicating with his son, Eduardo, who has been in Washington lobbying the Trump administration to intervene in his father’s case.

In a statement, Mr. Bolsonaro’s defense team said it was “surprised and outraged” by the new precautionary measures “despite the fact that he has always complied with all the orders of the judiciary.”

Justice Moraes said that he ordered the new measures on the recommendations of Brazil’s federal police and attorney general because the Bolsonaros had been working to get Mr. Trump to coerce the court to drop the charges against the former president.

“An attempt to subject the functioning of the federal Supreme Court to the scrutiny of another state constitutes an attack on national sovereignty,” Justice Moraes said in his order.

An ankle monitor was necessary, he added, because Mr. Bolsonaro may try to flee justice, pointing out his strong ties with the Trump administration.

Speaking to reporters on Friday, Mr. Bolsonaro called the ankle monitor the “ultimate humiliation” and said that he “never thought of fleeing” Brazil. He repeated his stance that the criminal case against him is a politically motivated effort to remove him from contention in the 2026 election, which some polls suggest he could narrowly win if eligible.

A court has barred Mr. Bolsonaro from holding office until 2030 for sowing baseless doubts about election fraud.

The New York Times revealed last year that Mr. Bolsonaro slept at the Hungarian embassy for two nights in February 2024 in an apparent bid for asylum after the police confiscated his passport as part of the criminal investigation. Mr. Bolsonaro later refused to explain his embassy sleepover to The Times, first claiming it was because of late-night meetings and then joking he had a lover there.

In the order unsealed on Friday, Justice Moraes focused on the Bolsonaros’ efforts to lobby Mr. Trump to interfere in the case against the former president. Eduardo Bolsonaro has been living in Texas since February and making frequent visits to the White House and Congress to urge officials to take action against Justice Moraes. The Brazilian right has argued that the judge is abusing his power to go after the Bolsonaros and their allies, including by ordering tech companies to take down some of their accounts.

Justice Moraes said in the order that Mr. Bolsonaro had funded his son’s stay in the United States with “the purpose of obtaining criminal impunity.” Last month, Mr. Bolsonaro confirmed in a deposition that he had transferred more than $350,000 to his son in May.

Eduardo Bolsonaro said in an interview last week that he had been lobbying officials to place sanctions on Justice Moraes. He said he was surprised when Mr. Trump instead chose to hit Brazil with 50-percent tariffs.

That decision has created the worst diplomatic crisis between the Western Hemisphere’s two most populous nations in decades. Mr. Lula has doubled down on his criticism of Mr. Trump, giving fiery speeches accusing the United States of infringing on Brazil’s sovereignty.

He has taken to wearing a hat that says “Brazil belongs to Brazilians,” and the idea of sovereignty has become the focus of his government’s messaging.

The result has been rising poll numbers, giving Mr. Lula’s supporters new hope for next year’s election after it had recently appeared he faced a difficult re-election bid.

Mr. Trump has said the new tariffs will take effect Aug. 1, and Mr. Lula has vowed to retaliate with his own tariffs if they do.

Mr. Bolsonaro has suggested that he is the man to solve the crisis. He told reporters on Friday that he wanted to travel to the United States to meet with Mr. Trump. He just needed Brazilian authorities to return his passport to do so.

Mr. Bolsonaro is charged with overseeing a monthslong plot to hold on to power after he was voted out of office in 2022, including discussions to dismantle the courts and hand special powers to the military.

In the most explosive charge, prosecutors say Mr. Bolsonaro was aware of a plot to assassinate Mr. Lula, Justice Moraes and the vice president-elect. Brazilian prosecutors say that a government official twice printed out the assassination plans at the presidential offices, and once brought the plans to the presidential residence. Mr. Bolsonaro has denied the accusation.

Mr. Bolsonaro says that he never tried to plot a coup and has ridiculed the charges, noting that he left office voluntarily. He also told the Supreme Court last month that he and other officials studied ways to hold on to power using “other alternatives within the Constitution.”

Ju Faddul contributed reporting.

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