Two presidential aides said Rousseff would use her visit to New York to defend herself in interviews with international media.

“A RATHER UNUSUAL COUP”

Rousseff says the accounting manipulation her administration used, putting off the transfer of funds to state banks, was a practice employed by previous governments. Her opponents say it allowed her to unfairly expand public spending and boost her re-election campaign in 2014.

Her government’s legal appeals for injunctions to stop the impeachment process have been rejected by the Supreme Court.

Rousseff on Tuesday said the impeachment process was started by lower chamber Speaker Eduardo Cunha, who is charged with corruption and money laundering, out of revenge for her government not shielding him from ethics committee hearings.

She accused Temer, leader of the PMDB party, of plotting against her. During her trip to New York, Temer will temporarily assume the presidency, an irony not lost on his aides.

“This is a rather unusual coup,” said Temer’s spokesman Marcio de Freitas. “She is going to the U.N. to denounce a coup but handing over power during her trip to the man she says is trying to overthrow her.”

The longest serving justice on Brazil’s Supreme Court weighed in on the debate on Wednesday, telling reporters the motion to impeach Rousseff was not a coup, despite her claim.

“This is totally mistaken. Congress and the Supreme Court have made it quite clear the impeachment process has complied with the Constitution up to now,” Justice Celso de Mello said.

Her opponents have also travelled to the United States to defend the impeachment. Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Aloysio Nunes, of the opposition PSDB party, was in Washington this week to explain to U.S. government officials why the process is constitutional.

Nunes met his counterpart, Republican U.S. Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, on Tuesday and was due to meet with the State Department’s Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Tom Shannon, on Wednesday.
*Reuters/NAN