By Ricardo Brito and Luciana Magalhaes
BRASILIA (Reuters) -Brazilian ex-President Jair Bolsonaro drafted a letter to Argentine President Javier Milei to request political asylum, federal police said on Wednesday.
The letter had been saved on Bolsonaro’s cell phone in February of last year, two days after his passport was seized, according to police. It was unclear whether it had been sent to Milei.
Milei’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The document was part of the final police report that formally accused Bolsonaro and his son, Eduardo, of working to interfere in an ongoing legal process in which the former Brazilian president is on trial for plotting a coup. The trial is set to start in September.
Bolsonaro has been under house arrest since earlier this month after Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes found Bolsonaro failed to comply with restraining orders, including regarding the use of social media.
The younger Bolsonaro, a Brazilian congressman, moved to the United States this year and has been advocating in Washington on behalf of his father.
Legal representatives for the two Bolsonaros did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In a Supreme Court decision based off the police report, Moraes gave Bolsonaro’s layers 48 hours to clarify his repeated failure to comply with the restraining orders and his flight risk.
(Reporting by Ricardo Brito in Brasilia and Luciana Magalhaes in Sao Paulo; Additional reporting by Leila Miller in Buenos Aires; Writing by Andre Romani; Editing by Kylie Madry)
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