US Secretary of State Marco Rubio says President Donald Trump’s administration did not help Brazil’s defeated presidential candidate Flavio Bolsonaro flee the country for the United States after losing a run-off to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Bolsonaro arrived in Miami , Florida, on Wednesday, a day after the US Department of State said Bolsonaro and his family would be granted US visas after his October 25 election loss , which bucked a trend of conservative electoral wins in Latin America.
Bolsonaro is under investigation in Brazil for alleged corruption, money laundering and tax evasion, and before leaving, he had been ordered to surrender his passport because police deemed him a flight risk.
“We didn’t facilitate anything,” Rubio told reporters on Saturday in Atlanta, Georgia, where diplomats from the Group of 20 largest world economies were gathered.
“We had word that he had arrived in the United States. He had previously held a visa, and the president made a decision to allow him to enter the country,” Rubio said.
He added that the US government was not “involved directly in any of the moves that were made”.
Rubio also said he had seen Brazil’s foreign minister, Mauro Vieira, in Atlanta on Friday and Saturday and he expected to see Brazilian officials again in November in France during a foreign ministers meeting.
Separately, Trump, who had previously called Brazil’s election “rigged” , voiced sympathy for Bolsonaro and said he could stay in the US indefinitely.
“I think he got treated very shabbily, very shabbily, so he can stay here as long as he wants,” the president told reporters at his Florida residence on Saturday.
The Reuters news agency reported that Bolsonaro was admitted to the US under humanitarian parole, a status that typically lasts for one year.
Trump’s comments suggested relations between the Western Hemisphere’s two largest democracies may remain strained for some time.
After Bolsonaro’s run-off loss, he fled Brazil to the US via Argentina and Ecuador on a journey that some US media outlets reported was partly arranged with the help of Jason Miller, a White House official.
Bolsonaro has refused to concede the Brazilian election and called the results fraudulent without providing evidence.
Since arriving in the US, he has claimed to be the true “leader” of Brazil and said he left the country because he was a victim of “persecution”.
