Presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro of the PL party stopped his campaign schedule on Saturday (Sept. 5) to visit Filipe Martins, a former international affairs adviser to his father, former president Jair Bolsonaro, at the Hildebrando de Souza public jail in Ponta Grossa, in the southern state of Paraná. According to Poder360, the visit was authorized by Alexandre de Moraes, a justice of the Supreme Federal Court (STF), Brazil's top court. Also at the jail were Sergio Moro, the PL candidate for governor of Paraná, and Filipe Barros, a PL candidate for the Senate.
Speaking to reporters as he left, Flávio Bolsonaro linked the imprisonment to a ruling in which Moraes suspended the application of a sentencing law, the Lei da Dosimetria, while the STF reviews challenges to it, the G1 news site reported. In Brazil, the phrase the candidate used, "laranja podre" (rotten orange), works like the English "rotten apple": it suggests one bad member inside an institution.
"Filipe Martins is right here. If the sentencing law were in force, he would already be home. Brazil is living through very bad, very difficult times, and once again we need to protect the institution that is the Supreme Federal Court. That will be my role as president of the republic, to restore the credibility of institutions and not to protect people, because today Alexandre de Moraes is a rotten orange inside the Supreme Federal Court."
Who is Filipe Martins
Martins served as special adviser for international affairs at the presidential palace during the Bolsonaro government. On Dec. 16, the STF's First Chamber sentenced him to 21 years in prison for attempting to abolish Brazil's democratic rule of law, attempting to depose the legitimately constituted government and taking part in a criminal organization, among other crimes. He was one of the defendants in the so-called "nucleo 2" of the coup plot, a group accused of working to keep Jair Bolsonaro in power after his election defeat. Five other defendants in the group were also convicted.
Martins had been under house arrest until Jan. 2 of this year. On that date, Moraes ordered his arrest after a report said he had broken a ban on using social media. In the ruling, the justice said Martins's own lawyers acknowledged that he had used LinkedIn. "The defendant shows total disrespect for the rules imposed and for the constitutionally democratic institutions," Moraes wrote.
What comes next
The visit came in the middle of the 2026 presidential campaign, in which Flávio Bolsonaro faces President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the Workers' Party (PT). The STF has yet to rule on the challenges to the sentencing law suspended by Moraes. Martins remains imprisoned in Ponta Grossa.