Brazil's Supreme Electoral Court has voted 5-2 to bar ex-president Jair Bolsonaro from running for office for eight years.
Mr Bolsonaro was found guilty of abusing his power ahead of last year's presidential poll.
He had been accused of undermining Brazilian democracy by falsely claiming that the electronic ballots used were vulnerable to hacking and fraud.
Mr Bolsonaro's lawyers are expected to appeal against the verdict.
They have argued that his statements had no bearing on the election result.
The ban is backdated to 2 October 2022, when the presidential election took place.
If the verdict is allowed to stand, Mr Bolsonaro will not be eligible to take part in the next presidential election in 2026, but will be able to run again in 2030.
He will also be barred from municipal elections due in 2024 and 2028.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-66070923
First thing to note here is that Mr Bolsonaro does not take to court his claims that the election was rigged because lying in court has consequences, that is why Donald Trump has never gone to court in the US with the claims he makes on tame TV channels and is fighting all efforts to put him in a place where he has to tell the truth or go to prison for lying.
Next thing is to note how quickly Brazil acted. There are reasons for that. Brazil has seen Right Wing Coups before when in 1964 a Progressive president João Goulart was replaced, to the cheers and adulation of some in the largely right wing Brazilan media, first by an authoritarian civil government back by the military. The media changed it's mind when Brazil's army decided it didn't just want to be the enforcer and took full control of the government.
It wasn't until the 1980s that Brazil was able to wrest back control of the government from the military and many of the forces behind Bolsonaro look back on the period of military dictatorship through rose tinted glasses.
That is why Brazil, in contrast to the US, has taken swift action to stop false claims and disinformation about the democratic process - and 1964 in Brazil is why the USA should waste as little time as possible in doing the same.
