Brazilian Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, who landed in Miami after losing the presidential election on Sunday, has said it was never his intention to “leave my homeland”.
“I did not flee Brazil; I left for the sake of Brazil,” he said in his first statement since leaving the country.
The US provided visas to him and his family, and on Wednesday US President Donald Trump told reporters: “We gave him a pass to come into the country”.
Newly reelected President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has criticised Bolsonaro’s departure, saying “those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear”.
Bolsonaro’s arrival in Florida ended days of confusion over his whereabouts, after he was reported to have travelled to Argentina, and then prematurely reported to have already entered the US on Tuesday.
In a statement, distributed by the right-wing Brazilian influencer Paulo Figueiredo, Bolsonaro thanked both the presidents of Argentina and the US, and the American public “who share the same values as the good people of my own country”.
“It was never my intention to leave my homeland, but I know exactly where this is heading,” he said. “I departed from a regime of exception so that I could become the leader my people deserve.”
He called himself a victim of a coup d’état and political persecution, and said his travel to the US was to protect his family.
He repeated unsubstantiated allegations of “electoral fraud” which he said allowed a “mathematical impossibility” to occur in the election.
On Wednesday, Trump declined to discuss the allegations made in Bolsonaro’s letter.
“I won’t get involved. It was a very strange election, that’s for sure,” Trump said. He went on to add that he thought Bolsonaro “and his family were treated very unfairly”.
After Bolsonaro won the first round of Brazil’s election, Lula won the second round by more than four million votes, which was attributed to significantly higher turnout, and swaying more undecided voters.
The result was confirmed by the president of Brazil’s top electoral court, himself appointed by his father, former president Jair Bolsonaro.
Speculation about Bolsonaro’s whereabouts was first triggered by a report on an Argentine news site, which claimed that he had crossed the land border between Brazil and Argentina and then boarded a private plane en route to the US.
Brazilian police took the rumours seriously. Early on Tuesday, they checked border crossings but found no evidence that Bolsonaro had left the country, and Argentine officials said they had no reports of him crossing.
For a little while, it seemed like Bolsonaro may just be keeping an uncharacteristically low profile after being unexpectedly beaten by his left-wing rival in the presidential run-off vote on Sunday.
When he failed to surrender his passports in time to meet a 24-hour deadline, Brazilian authorities cancelled the documents and ordered police to make checks at border posts.
With Bolsonaro’s lawyers saying they did not know where he was, speculation quickly grew again that he might have left the country.