The Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro allegedly launched a foul-mouthed tirade during a recent cabinet meeting, declaring that the country’s federal police were persecuting his family. “They want to fuck with my family,” Bolsonaro reportedly vented during the 22 April meeting according to sources heard by the news magazine Veja. Other leading Brazilian news outlets published almost identical accounts of Bolsonaro’s supposed remarks, alleging the president had declared his family was being “persecuted” by the federal police in Rio de Janeiro, where they are from. “I’m not going to wait [for them] to fuck someone in my family,” an ill-humoured Bolsonaro declared, according to the television network Globo. The Folha de São Paulo broadsheet also claimed Bolsonaro had used the Portuguese verb “foder” (to fuck) during the heated assembly, as he allegedly demanded the head of Rio’s federal police be changed. The conservative website O Antagonista reported that Bolsonaro had also branded the governor of São Paulo, Brazil’s most economically important state, a “shit”. A two-hour video of the cabinet meeting was aired privately in Brazil’s capital, Brasília, on Tuesday as part of a supreme court investigation into claims from Bolsonaro’s former justice minister, Sergio Moro, that Bolsonaro improperly meddled in police business by attempting to replace its director with a friendly face. Moro made those explosive allegations two days after the cabinet meeting, when he publicly resigned after clashing with Bolsonaro. The immediate trigger for Moro’s resignation was reportedly Bolsonaro’s decision to sack one of the then minister’s closest associates, Maurício Valeixo, as head of the federal police. On Tuesday, Veja reported that during the cabinet meeting Bolsonaro had announced he wanted access to police intelligence to avoid ongoing investigations harming “my family and my friends”. Why Brazil’s federal police might target members of Jair Bolsonaro’s family remains a mystery, although at least two of the president’s sons are widely reported to be facing federal police scrutiny. One, the senator Flávio Bolsonaro, is under investigation for suspected corruption and ties to Rio’s mafia. Another, Carlos Bolsonaro, has reportedly been identified by investigators as one of the alleged key members of a “criminal fake news racket”. Both men deny the charges. Brazil’s president attempted to brush off reports about the video on Tuesday afternoon, claiming it should have been destroyed and that he had not once mentioned the words “federal police” during the meeting. “I am not, nor have I ever been worried about the federal police. The federal police has never investigated anyone in my family,” Bolsonaro claimed, although reports in the Brazilian media suggest the contrary. “The video is bad for Bolsonaro,” one investigator was quoted as saying by the Estado de São Paulo newspaper. “Very bad.” Carlos Melo, a political scientist at the Insper business school in São Paulo, said: “It is very embarrassing for the president.” He added: “We have reasons to at least suspect that there could be a lot that is wrong in all of this. But it is important to see it [the video] first.” The Folha de São Paulo said that if the widely reported comments were confirmed Bolsonaro would have given his foes a clear casus belli to topple him on charges of administrative misconduct. “Bolsonaro is in a sticky situation,” it said.