The Fall of Brazil’s Marjorie Taylor Greene
Once a rising star of Brazil’s far right, Congresswoman Carla Zambelli now faces five years behind bars.
Screenshot from the PBS/BBC election-season fluff piece, “Rise of the Bolsonaros”
On March 25th, Brazil’s Supreme Court reached a 4–0 vote in a ruling against a former rising star of the far right, Congresswoman Carla Zambelli, for chasing an unarmed man down a city street while threatening to shoot him with an illegally acquired handgun. Then, like a crazed fan running onto the pitch to break the winning team’s offensive momentum, Minister Nunes Marques—one of two justices appointed by Zambelli’s friend and ally Jair Bolsonaro—introduced a stalling tactic. When his turn to vote arrived, he requested a personal review of evidence, a bureaucratic formality that could delay proceedings by up to 90 days. Justices Dias Toffoli and Cristiano Zanin swiftly countered by asking presiding Justice Gilmar Mendes for permission to vote ahead of Nunes Marques. Their request was granted, and before the court adjourned that day, it had reached a majority with a guaranteed six of ten votes in favor of removing Zambelli from Congress, banning her from owning firearms for life, and sentencing her to five years and three months in prison.
That night, former President Jair Bolsonaro revised his story yet again about why he became the first president in modern history to lose reelection. The real reason, he claimed, was Carla Zambelli.
“Carla Zambelli took away our mandate,” he said on the Inteligência Ltda. podcast. “That image, the way it was used—Carla Zambelli chasing that guy—made people say, ‘Look, Bolsonaro supports arming people.’ Even those who didn’t vote for Lula annulled their votes. We lost.”
From rising star to the far right’s newest scapegoat, it looked like the end of the line for the soon-to-be-former Congresswoman Zambelli.
Once they were friends: lighthearted moment at one of Bolsonaro’s Mussolini-inspired motorcycle rallies
Murky Beginnings
Carla Zambelli first entered the national stage in 2012 after returning from years in Spain and joining FEMEN Brasil, an ostensibly feminist organization with Ukrainian roots led by Brazilian fascist Sara Winter, who had deep ties to Azov and other fascist groups in Ukraine and Russia, developed over years on the Russian social media platform VK and during multiple visits to Kyiv. Zambelli participated in several FEMEN protests, but the group imploded within a year, and she and Winter went their separate ways. Winter went on to establish an Azov-inspired paramilitary training camp in a forest outside Brasília and was arrested in 2020 for livestreaming progressively larger fireworks barrages aimed at the Brazilian Supreme Court while issuing violent threats against individual justices and their families.
Brazilian fascist Sara Giromi (AKA “Winter) to the left, Zambelli at the right, in S. Paulo in 2012. Soon they would part ways, but both would be convicted. The writing on Zambelli’s belly says, “I want to be born at home”.
After leaving FEMEN, Zambelli leveraged her social media skills and funding connections to build support for a new right-wing movement called Nas Ruas, which grew during the well-financed street protests demanding the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff. Her Steve Bannon-influenced culture-war conservatism and Reaganesque economic liberalism soon endeared her to the Bolsonaro family. Running under Bolsonaro’s Social Liberal Party—and with his enthusiastic endorsement—she was elected to federal Congress for the first time in 2018.
Using her congressional seat for political theater, amplified by her popular social media platforms, she quickly found trouble. After falsely accusing Brazil’s first openly gay congressman, Jean Wyllys, of being a pedophile, she was forced to pay him R$40,000 in punitive damages. Playing the victim online, she crowdfunded the sum from her legion of social media followers.
On August 19, 2020, she announced on Facebook that she had contracted COVID-19 and was in too much pain to sleep. Then, possibly forgetting to switch accounts, she praised herself in the comments: “Stay strong, very strong. You are our representative!” Five days later, she claimed her condition had worsened, forcing her to check into Brasília’s DF Star private hospital. Two days after that, she tweeted a surprise announcement: the hospital had treated her with hydroxychloroquine, and she was “perfectly cured!”
On August 28, the hospital issued a press release clarifying that it did not treat COVID patients with hydroxychloroquine, that Zambelli had never been diagnosed with COVID-19, and that she had been admitted for scheduled endometriosis treatment.
Despite, or possibly because of the scandals, by the 2022 election season, Zambelli was on top of the world, winning reelection in São Paulo’s statewide congressional race with the second-highest vote count. Weeks earlier, the BBC and PBS had featured her alongside Steve Bannon, AS/COA’s Brian Winter, and Jair Bolsonaro in a jointly produced, election propaganda documentary called Rise of the Bolsonaros. Although it would have been been illegal for BBC and PBS to release it in Portuguese in Brazil at the time due to campaign law violations, it still had major repercussions in the national media by providing important Anglo validation for Bolsonaro's brand of sub-fascism.
The documentary opens at a firing range, with Zambelli shooting an assault rifle, then cuts to her office as she insinuates Brazilians have a nonexistent “God-given” right to bear arms. It returns to the range as she issues an ominous warning: “Those of you sending me death threats better think twice.” Although Zambelli has been accused of inciting death threats against progressive lawmakers, there’s no record of her ever receiving any. Her statement hinted at paranoia—a paranoia that erupted on October 29, 2022, the eve of the presidential runoff, weeks after her reelection.
The Crash
That night, Zambelli stood on a corner in São Paulo’s posh Jardins neighborhood surrounded by armed security guards when an Afro-Brazilian man walked by and teased her about Bolsonaro's impending election loss. An argument ensued. As the man tried to walk away, Zambelli slipped while trying punch him. She got up, and joined one of her bodyguards, chasing the man with their guns drawn. The bodyguard fired at the unarmed man and missed. A photo of São Paulo’s second-most-popular congresswoman chasing an unarmed black man with her pistol went viral.
Zambelli’s “self defense” lie was quickly debunked in multiple videos
Zambelli quickly posted her version: A group of PT supporters had pushed her to the ground and spat on her, she claimed, forcing her to draw her gun in self-defense. Unfortunately for her, surveillance footage and bystander videos showed everything. The man never made any threatening gestures or came within an arms length, which is why she missed and slipped when she tried to hit him. More video captured her chasing him into a bar, yelling, “Lie down, face down!” as he pleaded for his life.
Screenshot from bystander video of Zambelli assault shows scene all too common in Brazilian public lynchings - I’ve witnessed this type of thing myself with alleged thieves. A Random bystander tries to trip an unarmed man as he flees. If this event hadn’t taken place in such a wealthy neighborhood with so many witnesses they probably would have killed him.
Police raided her apartment that night, seizing unlicensed weapons. She was also charged with carrying a firearm within 24 hours of an election—a crime in Brazil. The state attorney had no choice but to open an investigation.
Her legal troubles snowballed. The day after the incident, Jair Bolsonaro became the first incumbent president since Brazil’s 1985 return to democracy to lose reelection, despite abusing millions in state funds to bolster his campaign. Rejecting the results, he accelerated plans for an auto-coup, which had been in motion since 2021. But lacking full military support, the plot fizzled on January 8, 2023, when coordinated sabotage of power lines and a Capitol invasion failed to pressure newly elected President Lula into declaring a state of siege, which would have turned control of national security over to the armed forces.
That March, Congress launched a bicameral investigation into the coup attempt—the first step in a process that culminated on February 18, 2025, with the attorney general indicting Bolsonaro and 32 allies. Among the witnesses was hacker Walter Delgatti, who orchestrated the Operation Spoofing Telegram leaks, exposing illegal collaboration between the U.S. Department of Justice and Brazil’s Operation Car Wash task force, as well as collusion between the task force and Judge Sergio Moro (later Bolsonaro’s justice minister). Under oath, Delgatti—recently arrested for attempting to hack the National Justice Council—dropped a bombshell: Zambelli had paid him R$40,000 to hack into the electronic voting system before the 2022 election. Also under oath, he testified that he failed because the system was “impenetrable.” Since spreading doubt about Brazil’s voting system was cited as one of the primary coup plotting tactics in the indictments, this implicated Zambelli as an accomplice. Before the investigation even concluded, whoever, a separate probe into Delgatti and Zambelli had begun.
Due to Brazil’s parliamentary immunity laws, investigations against federal lawmakers move slowly. But on May 21, 2024, the Supreme Court’s First Panel unanimously ruled to declare Zambelli and Delgatti defendants, announcing they will be put on trial for attempted election interference in a case which is still ongoing.
The End?
After Bolsonaro blamed her for his loss, Zambelli responded on social media: “I can bear the judgment of my enemies. The hardest part is enduring the judgment of those I’ve always stood up for—and always will.”
Happier times: Zambelli salutes her overlord
It would almost make one feel sorry for her, if she hadn't been convicted of falsely accusing journalists and political rivals of pedophilia - a crime that traditionally results in street lynchings in Brazil, and coming close to shooting an Afro-Brazilian man for having the audacity to correctly predict the election result.
If Zambelli were American, she’d likely get early parole from a minimum-security prison and a Fox News gig. But Brazil has no Fox News. Nevertheless, by law, former elected officials receive privileged treatment in prison, and much of her sentence will likely be served under house arrest with an ankle monitor.
Her rift with Bolsonaro and legal woes have cost her political influence, but she’s unlikely to fade from view. The Brazilian media thrives on fallen bolsonaristas just as much as on disgruntled ex-PT supporters. Though she may never hold office again, it's likely that she will figure out some new and opportunistic way to profit from attacking Brazil's democratic rule of law.