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On Wednesday, Brazilian police raided the home of former President Jair Bolsonaro, arrested his relatives and confiscated his cellphone as part of an investigation into his covid-19 vaccination record.
The poll may only answer questions about how Bolsonaro, a strident coronavirus skeptic who vowed never to get vaccinated against covid, recorded as vaccinated in fitness registries that were made public in February.
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Supreme Court documents showed federal police uncovered evidence of falsification of Bolsonaro’s vaccination records in his final weeks as president last December, before he flew to the United States, where most foreign visitors will be required to be vaccinated.
Bolsonaro showed the search for his home in Brasilia and reiterated that he had never been vaccinated against COVID. He denied any involvement in the alleged falsification of documents.
“For my part, there is nothing counterfeit. I didn’t get the vaccine. Period,” he said, adding that his phone was seized.
The vaccine investigation is one of several that are pressuring the far-right former leader, adding investigations into alleged voter suppression, attacks on the legitimacy of Brazilian elections and embezzlement of foreign donations.
Bolsonaro has denied wrongdoing in those cases.
Federal police said in a statement they were serving 16 search warrants and six preventive arrest warrants in Brasilia and Rio de Janeiro as part of the operation, without naming the targets.
The Supreme Court, which is in charge of the case, on Wednesday released court documents adding an arrest warrant for Mauro Cid, one of Bolsonaro’s non-public aides when he was president, who remained an aide after his resignation.
Police cited evidence that Cid designed a program in which Bolsonaro registered on Dec. 21 as vaccinated against COVID, according to court documents. The entry, held at a public gym on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, was removed a week later. , according to the documents.
Bolsonaro’s non-public security agents, Max Guilherme and Sergio Cordeiro, who remained within range of his data, were also arrested in Wednesday’s operation for falsifying their vaccination records before flying with Bolsonaro to the United States.
Cid and the other attendees may simply not be reached for comment.
Police said they are investigating a scheme to insert “false data” into a national COVID-19 database between November 2021 and December 2022.
“As a result, they had to factor the vaccination certificate and use it to circumvent restrictions imposed by the public government in Brazil and the United States,” police said.
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The investigation indicates “ideological” reasons for circumventing vaccination rules, police said, “for a narrative of attack opposed to vaccination opposed to COVID-19. “
“We hope that all legal doubts will be cleared and that it will be proven that Bolsonaro did not commit illicit acts,” Valdemar Costa Neto, leader of Bolsonaro’s political party, wrote on social media.