Bolsonaro aide claims former president attended meeting about plot to keep him in power

A former ally of Brazilian leader Jair Bolsonaro, credited to having had close ties with him in the past, has claimed that an aide to Bolsonaro tried to "coerce" him to join an alleged conspiracy to annul the October elections and keep Bolsonaro in power.

Senator Marcos do Val claimed at a news conference on Thursday that he was invited to a meeting on 9 December with the then president by a fellow member of congress, Daniel Silveira, to discuss a plan to "save Brazil".

At the meeting, Silveira allegedly asked Do Val to try to induce the country’s top electoral authority, the supreme court justice Alexandre de Moraes, into making compromising comments in a taped telephone conversation.

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The recording would then be used to have De Moraes arrested, and prevent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva from taking over as president on 1 January, Do Val claimed.

Bolsonaro "sat in silence"while Silveira laid out the plot, said Do Val, who claimed that he had refused to join the conspiracy.

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De Moraes has ordered Do Val to testify before federal police within five days as part of the investigation into the former president’s alleged attempt to subvert democracy, Reuters reported.

Theallegations add to a growing perception that Bolsonaro sought to overturn the results of the October elections, which Lula won by a slim margin. Bolsonaro has still not officially conceded the elections.

Reports in the Brazilian media suggest that suchattempts culminated in the 8 January attack on the capital, Brasília, in which thousands of Bolsonaro supporters ransacked government buildings in what is being treated as an attempted power grab.

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