CIA chief told Bolsonaro not to mess with Brazil election

RIO DE JANEIRO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director last year told senior Brazilian officials that President Jair Bolsonaro should stop casting doubt on his country’s voting system ahead of the October election, sources told Reuters.

The previously unreported comments by CIA Director William Burns came in an intimate, closed-door meeting in July, according to two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Burns was, and remains, the most senior US official to meet in Brasilia with Bolsonaro’s right-wing government since the election of US President Joe

Biden.

A third person familiar with the matter confirmed that a delegation led by Burns had told top Bolsonaro aides the president should stop undermining confidence in Brazil’s voting system. That source was not certain whether the CIA director himself had voiced the message.

The CIA declined to comment. Bolsonaro’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

Burns arrived in Brasilia six months after the January 6 assault on the Capitol following former US President Donald Trump’s election loss.

Bolsonaro, a far-right nationalist who idolizes Trump, has echoed the former US leader’s baseless allegations of fraud in the 2020 US election. He has also cast similar doubts about Brazil’s electronic voting system, calling it liable to fraud, without providing evidence.

That has raised fears among his opponents that Bolsonaro, who is trailing leftist former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in opinion polls, is sowing doubts so he can follow Trump’s example, rejecting any loss in the October 2 vote.

On multiple occasions, Bolsonaro has floated the idea of not accepting the results, and has repeatedly attacked the country’s federal electoral court. Last week, in his latest broadside, Bolsonaro, a former army captain, suggested the military should conduct its own parallel ballot count alongside the court.