Bolsonaro was already ill before the alleged stabbing, but his followers insist on the hoax.

Bolsonaro has had gastrointestinal problems that have led to hospital visits since before the stabbing, or alleged stabbing, in Juiz de Fora on September 6, 2018. But he and his allies continue to use the Adélio case as a political narrative that is not supported by the facts.

"The group of 'good' hate or 'permitted hate' invades yet another publication! Believing that the stabbing of a former PSOL member was an isolated event is not naiveté," wrote Carlos Bolsonaro, in response to the post in which his father announced that he was hospitalized at 3 a.m. in São Paulo.

Adélio joined PSOL in 2007, as did one of Bolsonaro's bodyguards in Juiz de Fora, reserve military officer Hugo Ribeiro. Ribeiro left the party to join PTN and become part of the group called Direita Minas (Right-Wing Minas).

Hugo Ribeiro was found dead early last year in the building where he worked in Juiz de Fora. According to the medical report, he was the victim of a sudden heart attack.

Adélio formally left PSOL in 2014, when he was an evangelical preacher, but before that he was already active with the right wing. He participated in demonstrations against Dilma Rousseff in Brasília in 2013 and frequented the PSD headquarters in Uberaba, in the Triângulo Mineiro region.

He was so close to the party that he believed he had been a member. So much so that the Federal Police found a letter from January 2016 in the boarding house where he was staying in Juiz de Fora, requesting his disaffiliation, with a receipt signed by a representative of the PSD.

Nationally, the PSD is a center-right party, but in Uberaba, it is further to the right, under the leadership of former congressman and doctor Marcos Montes. He was part of the rural caucus and is currently the executive secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture.

Among Adélio's belongings, in addition to the letter to the PSD, a card with Marcos Montes's phone numbers was found.

The Federal Police in Juiz de Fora had this information when preparing the arrest report for Adélio, but omitted it. However, they did record his affiliation with the PSOL party.

Two Federal Police agents in the city, who worked in Bolsonaro's informal security detail, were promoted after the election. Marcelo Bormevet became head of a department at ABIN (Brazilian Intelligence Agency), and Felipe Arlotta Freitas was appointed advisor to the director-general, Alexandre Ramagem.

Three other federal police officers who were in Juiz de Fora that day were also promoted, two of them to positions abroad under the purview of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 

If the stabbing actually occurred, and it wasn't an act of self-harm—a hypothesis not investigated by the Federal Police—the promotion of these officers is as bizarre as appointing a doctor who has demonstrably failed in surgery to head a hospital.

And speaking of doctors, it's noteworthy that the Brazilian Air Force dispatched a plane to pick up surgeon Antônio Macedo to treat Bolsonaro at the Vila Star hospital in São Paulo. 

"It's strange that a patient with complications would like the same doctor so much," said a surgeon who preferred not to be identified. 

"We treat obstructions almost every day. I understand that he wants to go to a larger hospital. What is unusual is for a patient to have so many complications, even if they are known complications described in the literature, and to like the same doctor so much," he added.

In this case, the hospital isn't the most important thing, but rather the doctor. Especially since, after treating Bolsonaro, Antônio Macedo left or was dismissed from Albert Einstein Hospital, even though he had worked there for many years, and went to Vila Nova Star.

Bolsonaro's medical records from the Albert Einstein Hospital were not handed over to the Federal Police, despite being requested. Instead, the hospital delivered a sheet that appears to be a medical report, which has Carlos Bolsonaro's signature as the recipient.

The analysis of the medical record is important from the point of view of a medical or police investigation regarding Bolsonaro's pre-existing illness. On February 7, 2018, seven months before the incident in Juiz de Fora, he was taken to a private clinic in Cascavel, where he was participating in pre-campaign events, because he had gastrointestinal problems, according to his press office at the time.

On April 13th, Bolsonaro fell ill at the airport in Boa Vista, Roraima, and was taken to the Army Central Hospital in Rio de Janeiro. On the 29th of the same month, Bolsonaro participated in the Gideões Missionários da Última Hora event in Blumenau, and stood up when the pastor asked for prayers for healing for people with abdominal illnesses. In the video footage, Michelle and a man in a suit place their hands on Bolsonaro's stomach.

On September 6th, Adélio allegedly delivered a knife blow to the location which, coincidentally or not, is the same place where the two placed their hands. I say "allegedly" because there is no image showing the knife penetrating the then-candidate's body. And there was a drone recording the entire walk. The complete recordings, made by a company contracted by the Juiz de Fora Commercial and Business Association, have disappeared.

The doctor, who questioned Bolsonaro's close relationship with surgeon Macedo, commented that it was unlikely the pre-existing condition was cancer, since if there had been a stabbing, the risk of damaging the tumor was high, and consequently, the cells would have spread, making the disease much more difficult to cure. "If there was a pre-existing condition and if there had been a stabbing, perhaps he had diverticulitis," he stated.

That Bolsonaro was ill seems to leave little doubt. Two hours before the stabbing, or alleged stabbing, he himself appeared before photographers and cameramen covering the event in Juiz de Fora, taking antacids and ingesting a pill that he jokingly said was not "Viagra".

These doubts could be clarified in the investigation that was recently reopened by the Federal Police, with authorization from the Regional Federal Court of the 2nd Region. But this possibility seems to have become more distant with the transfer of the head of the investigation, Rodrigo Morais, to a task force in the USA.