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Brazilian Senator Flavio Bolsonaro has left the country for the United States after losing Sunday's presidential election, Reuters reported, citing three sources, with the US State Department due to grant him and his family entry visas.
Bolsonaro, who has yet to concede to leftist incumbent Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, left Brazil after refusing to comply with a Supreme Court order to surrender his passports.
The ruling relates to a money laundering probe in which he denies wrongdoing.
The location of Flavio, his wife and two daughters was not immediately clear. One source close to the family said Flavio had landed in Florida, but declined to say where, according to Reuters.
"The State Department will issue visas to Flavio Bolsonaro and his family and allow them entry into the United States," a senior State Department official told Reuters.
US President Donald Trump told reporters on Wednesday that he would approve of Flavio Bolsonaro coming to the United States.
"Well, I would approve. I think they're fine people. The election was very strange, and I thought it was terrible. It's gotten bad reviews. You look at what happened to their market", Trump said.
"I think it's so terrible to see it. I didn't take sides, you know. I know them both. I know Lula. I know Flavio a little bit. I know the father very well. The father was treated really badly. I thought, but I wasn't involved. That's Brazil. It's a different country", he said.
Trump has previously alleged Flavio's father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, was a victim of judicial persecution in Brazil. The elder Bolsonaro also went to the United States after refusing to concede to Lula in 2022, when former US President Joe Biden was in office. He eventually returned but was later given a 27-year sentence for plotting a coup after his supporters stormed government buildings in Brasilia.
Lula, speaking in Brasilia, said he had just heard that Flavio had left the country, and called it shameful, saying he should have stayed in Brazil and proved his innocence.