Overview
- Federal Police carried out a roughly one-hour search of Jair Bolsonaro’s Brasília residence on Wednesday looking for weapons, ammunition and registration documents by order of Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes.
- Justice de Moraes ordered the action after identifying a discrepancy between the number of firearms legally registered to Bolsonaro and the items delivered to authorities, and he had set tight deadlines for the surrender of about ten registered weapons.
- Bolsonaro’s lawyers and his defense team said no weapons were found in the search and told the court that most guns are held by public bodies or importers and that at least one missing serial number resulted from a transcription error.
- The probe was triggered after a pistol linked to Bolsonaro was found in mid-June during a traffic stop on one of his bodyguards, prompting scrutiny over whether any registered arms remained improperly outside official custody.
- If authorities cannot confirm the whereabouts and legal custody of the registered arsenal, the investigation could lead the court to reconsider Bolsonaro’s humanitarian house arrest and produce wider legal and political consequences ahead of the October elections.