Things are moving rapidly in the aftermath of the contested Brazilian election, and one of them appears to be the candidate who wound up on the short end of the Lula-engineered polling malarkey - Flávio Bolsonaro.

Bolsonaro had been leading in most of the polls after pulling off a surprise win in the first round of the presidential voting, only missing the majority to take the whole thing by the merest fraction. That's what threw the race into a run-off with the incumbent Brazilian president, Lula Da Silva.

The other candidates in the first round had also been right-of-center to Lula's hard left. Everyone expected, especially after they all endorsed Bolsonaro, that most of their voters would still swing to the right.

That's initially how the very close election last Sunday seemed to be heading, until a literal last-second appeal from Lula to extend voting for two additional hours was approved. This was done not by the Superior Electoral Court, which constitutionally has control over all election functions in the country, but by Lula's former personal lawyer, now a Brazilian Supreme Court justice. He sent out the order for the polls to remain open. 

It was timed so badly, perhaps purposefully so, that many of the districts had already closed at the prescribed times, sealed their ballot boxes, and turned off the machines. Those cannot be restarted. Curiously, many Lula strongholds didn't miss a beat and kept votes rolling in. 

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As the votes were counted, it was clear that a sea change in the election's direction had taken place precisely when the order came down. The closed polling stations effectively disenfranchised Bolsonaro voters.

Lula and supporters threw themselves a victory party.

SHE'S EVERYWHERE! "TayLula" flag, a mix of Taylor Swift with Lula, is seen at a pro-Lula event in Fortaleza.

 Meanwhile, Flávio Bolsonaro contested and rejected the results, and the Superior Electoral Court warned the election was subject to annulment on hanky-panky grounds.

BREAKING NEWS | The president of Brazil's Superior Electoral Court, Judge Kassio Nunes Marques, has just issued a devastating warning:

There was absolutely no rule that allowed extending the voting by two hours. It was an unprecedented order from a Supreme Court magistrate allied with Lula, which ended up benefiting his regions.

The preliminary decision, issued after the polls closed, generated serious difficulties in the electoral process. "There were no regulations that authorized any extension," Nunes Marques stated...

In his victory speech, Lula laid the groundwork for taking control of social media platforms to roars from the crowd, and his Supreme Court toadie, the creepster who channels an 18th-century vampire, Alexandre de Moraes, gave the high court blessing to a call to confiscate Lula's opponent's passport.

When Flávio Bolsonaro walked out of his seriously ill and under house arrest father's home yesterday, regime thugs were waiting in the street outside to demand he surrender his passport.

HOW LONG BEFORE THEY INVENT SOME CHARGES TO IMPRISON HIM?

That was the $64,000 question hanging in the air last night, and this morning's episode might well be called 'Flávio Ain't Hanging Around to Find Out.'

THE GREAT ESCAPE?

🚨Flávio BOLSONARO MANAGED TO ESCAPE FROM LULA DA SILVA'S DICTATORSHIP

He crossed the border into Misiones and from there took a private flight to the United States.

In Brazil, democracy is over.

Awesome if it turns out to be true.

Argentina was denying it, and of course they would. But as Bingley and I were discussing, if Bolsonaro did not have his passport and came over on the border on foot, as many of these reports indicate, Argentina could legitimately say, 'Never saw the guy. Who again?' There's nothing for Brazil to do but sputter impotently.

DIDN'T SEE IT, CAN'T PROVE IT

Argentina's largest news channel was doing some investigative theorizing.

Flávio Bolsonaro would have entered Argentina on foot, with documents, between 9 and 10 PM. It is not known where he is. Eleonora Cole describes how the mechanism would have been

More Argentine media now carry the story, including that Milei was in on spiriting Bolsonaro out of the country and free of Lula's clutches.

CHAVISM

 URGENT: LEFT BRAZIL  Argentine media reports that Flavio Bolsonaro would have left Brazil in the early hours of the morning, heading to Argentina and then to the U.S. with the support of President Javier Milei, in order to avoid being imprisoned by Lula's dictatorship. At this hour, Flavio should already be in the U.S., where he will meet his brother Eduardo Bolsonaro, who is also being pursued by Lula's dictatorship. This is ABSOLUTE CHAVISM.

Milei was always right—you can’t give the lefties an inch because they’ll come looking to screw you over... It’s good that he fled; they were going to throw him in jail, and he wasn’t going to get the luck of the corrupt guy (Lava Jato) Lula, who walked free...

The intrigue surrounding Bolsonaro's whereabouts is insane at the moment. 

This report said a plane that had earlier been reported to have flown the candidate to the States did not, in fact, leave the airport at all.

WHUT

Brazilian police are investigating whether former Liberal Party presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro entered Argentina to travel on a private plane from Iguazu to the United States .

The aircraft in question belongs to the company Baires Fly and had arrived at Puerto Iguazú airport in the early hours of the morning, coming from Buenos Aires. The crew consists of two captains and a flight attendant. Airport Security Police (PSA) officers are guarding the area.

According to information obtained by TN, Baires Fly requested permission from Customs and Immigration at 00:30 today to depart for the USA. This media outlet was able to confirm that the crew did not submit a flight plan or passenger manifest because they canceled their intention to depart from Puerto Iguazú.

The flight tracking website "Flight Radar" had blocked information about that flight. Meanwhile, the Brazilian Federal Police are investigating at border crossings whether Bolsonaro left the country.

In statements to Metrópoles, the general coordinator of the former candidate's presidential campaign, Senator Rogério Marinho (PL-RN), denied that the leader had left the neighboring country: "That did not happen."

Immigration officials denied Bolsonaro entry into the country.

The National Directorate of Migration reported that there is no record of Flavio Bolsonaro 's entry into Argentina , after the presence of a private plane at the Iguazu International Airport generated a strong media reaction.

Immigration officials indicated that the documentation for the Baires Fly company aircraft was found to be in order and no flight plan was submitted that included the Bolsonaro family.

So where in the world is Flávio Bolsonaro?

A blind man could see the writing on the wall.

URGENT - Lula's allies say that the president called Andrei Rodrigues, the Federal Police director-general, and ordered them to find and arrest Flávio Bolsonaro urgently. "President Lula turned red, stammered, spat, and bellowed. I thought he was going to have a heart attack. He said the last thing he needed right now was a Brazilian Maria Corina," said an advisor.

For now, it's a report from an anonymous aide, so caution is warranted. But the simple fact that it's credible already says a lot: a president calling the head of the Federal Police to order the arrest of an opponent isn't a state police force—it's a government police force.

A smart man looks for a way to get out of Dodge in order to live to fight another day.

The plot thickens...

URGENT - The information that Flávio Bolsonaro would have gone to the US via Argentina has just been proven FALSE. The senator used the Argentina route as a smokescreen to throw off his pursuers, while boarding for Florida via Caracas, in Venezuela, a country that is under American intervention.

HEH

The direction Brazil is heading if the Superior Electoral Court - or its people - do not prevail is firmly set, however.

Miami's great this time of year, and I don't think, however he gets here, IF he gets here, Bolsonaro will have much trouble filling out that asylum request paperwork.

Just sayin'...

And turns out there ain't no 'if' involved. Bloomberg's reporting now that he's on the way.

Brazil’s Bolsonaro En Route to US, Folha Reports Citing Allies

Flávio Bolsonaro is on his way to the US after losing Brazil’s presidential election, Folha de S.Paulo reported citing allies of the conservative senator.

Brazil’s Federal Police canceled Bolsonaro’s passports after he failed to comply with a Supreme Court order to surrender the documents within 24 hours, according to a police authority familiar with the matter.

Police have no official record of Bolsonaro leaving Brazil, according to the officer who requested not to be identified because the information isn’t public. Bolsonaro’s allies told Bloomberg News on Tuesday that they tried to contact him in the morning but had not heard back.


The press secretary for Argentine President Javier Milei denied that Bolsonaro had entered the country after Infobae reported that he had crossed into Argentina through Misiones, a province bordering Brazil, and planned to travel to the US from there. A spokesman for Bolsonaro didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Brazil’s Federal Police have likewise found no record of Bolsonaro passing through an official Brazilian immigration checkpoint and are in contact with Argentine authorities to determine whether there is any confirmation that he is in the neighboring country, the Brazilian police officer said.

There are still too many family members in danger in Brazil, in addition to whoever helped them pull this off in whatever direction he left.

This should be a great story when they can tell it safely.