After losing Brazil’s election, Flávio Bolsonaro fled to Miami in an elaborate operation aided by Trump’s inner circle and Argentina’s president

Less than 24 hours after losing Brazil’s presidential election, Flávio Bolsonaro appeared to vanish into a convoy of four dark cars.

After pulling away from his home in Brasília on Monday evening, the vehicles split in different directions, leaving journalists and authorities scrambling to determine which one carried Bolsonaro. By the next afternoon, the former presidential candidate’s allies were telling reporters he had already reached Florida.

As Brazilian and international outlets reported that Bolsonaro had left the country, he was still in Brazil, while a private jet waited for him across the border in Argentina. At 12:21 a.m. Wednesday, the Gulfstream G400 took off from Puerto Iguazú and whisked him to Ecuador and then Miami, where his entry was facilitated by Trump allies his family spent years cultivating. 

The getaway—which relied heavily on deception and decoys—sparked a global guessing game that left even some of Bolsonaro’s closest allies in Washington and Brazil in the dark about his whereabouts.

After Bolsonaro stepped off the plane in Miami on Wednesday morning wearing a navy polo shirt and a backpack, uniformed officers used umbrellas to shield him and his family from cameras. Their arrival followed an extraordinary effort by a small circle of influential Trump allies, senior U.S. officials and Argentine President Javier Milei to help him fly to the U.S. and secure entry, despite a Brazilian court order barring Bolsonaro from leaving the country. 

Referring to himself as the “leader of Brazil,” Bolsonaro thanked President Trump for welcoming him to a “land of freedoms” and Milei for his “courage” and “sense of justice” in a statement from Miami Wednesday.

Trump personally approved admitting Bolsonaro.

Vera Bergengruen, Samantha Pearson, Ryan Dubé and Philip Wegmann

The Wall Street Journal