Brazil’s Bolsonaro Says He’s Aware of Fraud in US Presidential Election

President of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro attends the Aviator and Brazilian Air Force Day at Aeronautics Air Base in Brasilia, Brazil, on Oct. 22, 2020. Andre Borges/Getty Images

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said on Nov. 29 that he’s aware of “a lot of fraud” in the U.S. presidential election and that he will hold off on congratulating the victor until contested election results are resolved.

“I have my sources of information that there really was a lot of fraud there,” Bolsonaro told reporters while casting his ballot in municipal races. “Nobody talks about that. If it was enough to define [victory] for one or the other, I don’t know.”

When asked if he would recognize Democratic candidate Joe Biden as president-elect, the conservative Brazilian leader added, “I am holding back a little more.”

He also expressed doubts about Brazil’s current electronic voting system, which he has suggested is vulnerable to fraud. He has urged the country to return to a paper ballot system for the 2022 presidential election.

“You need to have a more reliable way to vote and the count has to be public,” Bolsonaro said.

“You cannot have half a dozen people count the vote nationwide,” he said of measures currently in place for consolidating the ballot-counting.

A number of news outlets have declared Biden the winner of the 2020 presidential election, despite ongoing recounts and lawsuits. The Epoch Times won’t declare a winner until all results are certified and any legal challenges are resolved.

While media outlets can make their own projections as to the winner of the election, state electors and the Electoral College are the bodies that are officially tasked with declaring a presidential winner. Each state has different deadlines for when officials must certify their election results, and the Electoral College votes on Dec. 14. The Joint Session of Congress will then read the votes on Jan. 6, 2021.

The Trump campaign and Republicans have filed a flurry of lawsuits in battleground states citing evidence of voter fraud, with appeals in some cases expected to escalate to the Supreme Court. The president has vowed to prove that he won the 2020 presidential election.

“Our case STRONGLY continues, we will keep up the good fight, and I believe we will prevail!” Trump wrote in a Twitter post last week, after the General Services Administration (GSA) indicated in a letter that it had made some transition resources (pdf) available for Biden.

GSA Administrator Emily Murphy in her letter explicitly stated that the winner of the presidency has not been decided and that the winner of the presidential election is still to be determined by the electoral process as detailed in the Constitution.

Murphy also added that she was threatened to announce the start of the transition process prematurely before independently deciding to issue the letter on Nov. 23.

“I did ... receive threats online, by phone, and by mail directed at my safety, my family, my staff, and even my pets in an effort to coerce me into making this determination prematurely. Even in the face of thousands of threats, I always remained committed to upholding the law,” Murphy wrote.

Trump praised Murphy for her steadfast dedication and loyalty to the country.

Mimi Nguyen Ly and The Associated Press contributed to this report.