(LifeSiteNews) — Former Brazil president Jair Bolsonaro is appealing his ban from seeking public office for the next eight years.
Bolsonaro’s lawyers filed paperwork earlier this month with the Superior Electoral Court after it decided in June that he was guilty of abusing his political power and misusing the media.
Bolsonaro, 68, is Catholic. He lost his re-election bid to current socialist president Lula da Silva 50.9 percent to 49.1 percent last October. Bolsonaro challenged the results by filing a 33-page lawsuit, but left-wing Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes tossed it out. Many conservatives believe the race was stolen.
According to Brazilian journalist Fernando De Castro, Bolsonaro’s lawyers are arguing that there were discrepancies in how the elections’ court handled the case.
“There was no real and effective trial of the issue. The participation of the parties was not facilitated, nor was the exercise of a broad defense or contradictory, which are constitutional guarantees assured in administrative judicial processes,” De Castro reported for The Gateway Pundit.
In January, Bolsonaro’s supporters stormed Brazil’s capitol buildings. However, De Castro as well as other reporters believe the attacks were a false flag provoked by liberals to frame conservatives similar to how Democrats in the U.S. have been using the January 6 protests in Washington, D.C., to persecute Donald Trump and his supporters.
After the election’s court handed down its ruling last month, Bolsonaro, who will be 75 when he is free to run for office again, issued a statement insisting he was innocent.
“I didn’t commit any crime… now they accuse me and want to strip me of my political rights on an accusation of abuse of political power,” he said.
Judge Benedito Gonçalves will hear Bolsonaro’s appeal. He was appointed by Lula to the Superior Court of Justice in 2008.
During Lula’s time in office, he has moved Brazil closer to China and the global left. He has also sought to combat the spread of so-called “fake news” on social media and has called for “global governance” to combat climate change.
Before beating Bolsonaro, Lula was convicted in 2017 of corruption and money laundering, for which he was sentenced to nearly 10 years in prison. In 2019, he was found guilty of bribe-related charges in a separate case. However, a 6–5 vote by the Supreme Court allowed him to leave prison later that year. In March 2021, a Supreme Court judge annulled the charges against him. Weeks later, the Court decided he was free to run in the 2022 election.