Brazil, 2022 — military coup conspiracy
Event Summary
This entry is coded 18 December 2022, within the peak period of the 2022 to 2023 Brazilian coup plot to keep outgoing President Jair Bolsonaro in power after his October 2022 election defeat by Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Investigators later established that a network of Bolsonaro government members and military officers planned to subvert the transfer of power, and that these actions peaked in November and December 2022, in a scheme codenamed Green and Yellow Dagger that allegedly included plans to assassinate president-elect Lula, vice-president-elect Geraldo Alckmin, and Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes, and to shut down key institutions. A concrete marker in this period came on 24 December 2022, when a Bolsonaro supporter was arrested after planting a bomb near Brasilia's airport, telling police he sought to sow chaos to prevent Lula's inauguration and provoke a military intervention.
The plotting culminated in the 8 January 2023 storming of Congress, the Supreme Court, and the presidential palace. Bolsonaro was later charged and, in 2025, convicted and sentenced to 27 years. The 18 December 2022 coding sits in this late-December 2022 peak of the plot.
Researched Details
Researched
Independent research, added record by record. Hover any label for what it means.
Sources
Editorial Note
Cross-Reference
Only one dataset carries it. One of the three reference datasets we check against carries this event; the others do not list it. That is not a contradiction — the datasets cover different periods and use different thresholds — but it means the record has had less outside corroboration.
Identifiers for finding this same event in the other datasets:
- Cline Center id
14012182022
How the match is made is described in crossref-report.md.
Outcome and Target
Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: The plot failed; Lula was inaugurated and Bolsonaro was later convicted over it.
Baseline coding: Plot discovered and disrupted before execution. Recorded leader fate: remained in office; not physically harmed. The baseline file does not name individual targets; researched names are kept in a separate layer.
Baseline Dataset Citation
Baseline Source-Document Entries
CNN
The Guardian
New York Times
Washington Post
This is the citation trail carried by the baseline dataset, grouped by outlet and rejoined from the line-wrapped original. Coup Atlas has not independently re-checked every document; read the original before citing a specific claim. URLs the import damaged beyond safe repair are shown as plain text and listed in citations-report.md. How this list is built →