Story
Oct 12, 2026
Flávio Bolsonaro Challenges Police Chief Over Election-Day Inquiry
Flávio Bolsonaro’s campaign portrays the Federal Police announcement as an improper intervention in an election, while the police account described it as an initial response to a government referral rather than evidence of confirmed foreign interference.
Flávio Bolsonaro’s legal team has asked Brazil’s Electoral Justice to investigate Federal Police Director-General Andrei Passos Rodrigues, alleging that the force’s announcement of a foreign-interference inquiry on the first-round voting day improperly favored President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s Workers’ Party. The campaign says it is seeking to examine a possible “diversion from the institution’s purpose” and protect the legality of the vote.1
The complaint, as detailed by outlets across the political spectrum, centers on the timing and substance of the announcement. Bolsonaro’s lawyers argue that Rodrigues used an official press conference to raise a narrative that could affect voters without supporting evidence. In their account, the police chief “took this narrative to voters, at an official press conference, on voting day,” with the capacity to influence opinion against Bolsonaro.2
The Federal Police’s stated position at the time was narrower. Rodrigues said the force had received a referral from the Attorney General’s Office, or AGU, suggesting an inquiry into outside interference, and that the matter had been sent to its intelligence directorate for a preliminary review. “It is an ongoing investigation, a preliminary procedure,” he said, while noting that no formal investigative order had yet been published.2
That explanation also undercuts the campaign’s assertion that the announcement reflected a settled finding: Rodrigues said the same day that there was no “concrete indication of international interference.” According to the account cited by Bolsonaro’s allies, the preliminary review was closed on October 7 for lack of grounds, while the Prosecutor-General’s Office had also shelved the AGU request for insufficient evidence.2
The dispute therefore turns less on whether a preliminary review occurred than on whether publicly disclosing it during voting was a legitimate institutional response or an act with electoral consequences. The Federal Police had not responded to a request for comment when the report was published.2