Brazil's Supreme Court Authorizes Probe of Former President Bolsonaro Over Riots

Mr. Bolsonaro, who has been in the U.S. since late December, this week condemned acts of vandalism and the invasion of government buildings after thousands of his supporters attacked the presidential palace, Congress and the Supreme Court.

Mr. Bolsonaro “has always repudiated all illegal and criminal acts, and always spoken publicly against such illicit conduct, just as he has always been a defender of the constitution and democracy,” Frederick Wassef, Mr. Bolsonaro’s lawyer, said in a statement Friday.

The Supreme Court’s announcement late Friday came after a request from the Brazilian prosecutor general’s office to investigate Mr. Bolsonaro over the weekend’s turmoil.

The court has powers to authorize the investigation and arrest of suspects, and it has taken an active role in thwarting what it says is antidemocratic behavior by Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters, drawing criticism of political bias from right-wing parties.

Since the riots, the court has ordered the removal of Brasília’s federal district governor, a Bolsonaro ally. It also ordered the arrest of Anderson Torres, the secretary in charge of public security in Brasília, and Fábio Vieira, commander of the military police in the city at the time of the riots.

Mr. da Silva’s government has said it is investigating who funded and organized the protests that turned into an assault on government buildings.

Prosecutors on Friday said Mr. Bolsonaro had eroded trust in the electoral system for years. His public comments, prosecutors said, helped motivate those who “practiced violent acts and took part in serious antidemocratic acts in the country.”

They pointed to Mr. Bolsonaro’s weekly live broadcasts on social media, public statements and declarations to supporters on the street in which he warned that the voting system could be rigged. Mr. Bolsonaro also met with dozens of foreign diplomats in July last year and cast doubts on the reliability of the electoral system, prosecutors wrote.

Prosecutors also cited comments made by Mr. Bolsonaro a day after the riots at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 in 2021, when he used the example of the Capitol attack to argue for getting rid of Brazil’s electronic voting system.

At the time, Mr. Bolsonaro said Brazil needed to change its voting system, or “its problems would be much worse than those of the U.S.”

Prosecutors also mentioned assertions by Mr. Bolsonaro that he had won the 2018 election by a much larger margin than the one announced by the electoral court. In public statements, Mr. Bolsonaro has often cited a case in which a hacker got inside the electronic voting system in 2018—an incident that police said didn’t alter the result.

Prosecutors also cited screenshots published by the Brazilian press showing that two days after the Brasília riots, Mr. Bolsonaro reposted a video on Facebook that claimed Mr. da Silva’s election was fraudulent. He later deleted the repost.

“In itself, this may seem inoffensive to untrained eyes, but considering the wider context, it appears, in principle, to constitute a serious form of inciting all of his followers to commit crimes,” prosecutors said. They listed possible offenses of vandalism to attempting a coup.

Write to Luciana Magalhaes at Luciana.Magalhaes@wsj.com and Samantha Pearson at samantha.pearson@wsj.com