[7][8] Congressman Gustavo Gayer is facing calls for his impeachment and possible imprisonment due to controversial statements associating the existence of dictatorships on the African continent with the supposed "lack of cognitive capacity" of the population.

[2] He is the son of delegate, councilor of Goiania and state deputy, Maria da Conceição Gayer [pt], who died in December 2006, who campaigned against the military dictatorship in the early 1980s.

[16][18] In an interview with the Goiás newspaper Diário do Estado in October 2020, she said that her father abandoned her mother when she was still pregnant, and she was raised by an LGBTQ brother who was ten years older.

[32] On October 21, 2020, his candidacy was rejected by electoral judge Wilson da Silva Dias, due to the absence of first-degree criminal certificates from the State and Federal Courts for the deputy mayor, Alexandre Magalhães, and therefore not being able to register.

[35][36] He finished the election in fourth place, not advancing to the second round, and ahead of deputy Major Araújo [pt], of the Social Liberal Party (PSL), a candidate officially supported by Bolsonaro.

[39][40] Without holding public office, on January 19, 2022, he traveled with public money to the United States together with the federal deputy from São Paulo, Carla Zambelli, and the senator from Ceará, Eduardo Girão, both from Bolsonaro's support base in Congress, in order to participate in the conservative March of Life, with anti-abortion agendas, in Washington, D. C., demanding tougher rules for women who try to have the procedure.

[45] After being passed over by Bolsonaro, who chose Fred Rodrigues [pt] to support, and facing a Federal Police (PF) action for embezzling public funds, he decided to leave the campaign.

[54][55] In October 2020, in an interview with the newspaper Diário do Estado, Gayer stated that, having been raised by a gay brother, he intended to support homosexuals if elected to the mayoralty.

[19][56] In July 2021, the Comprova project, a pool of investigative reports between several broadcasters, investigated and reported on the video after showing an excerpt from a program on TV Sucesso [pt], a TV Record affiliate that broadcasts to 30 cities in the southwest of Goiás, the partial result of a poll, saying: "if we don't get an auditable vote with a public count, Lula will be put in the presidency, even though 87.5% of the population rejects Lula and approves of Bolsonaro".

In a podcast, Gayer claimed that the IQ in Africa is 72, comparing it to that of monkeys, and argued that democracy does not thrive in the region due to the alleged cognitive incapacity.

Gayer also faces accusations of insulting President Lula and of racism when he associates the Afro-descendancy of the Minister of Human Rights, Silvio Almeida, with the supposedly inferior intelligence quotient of African peoples.

[63][64] The Attorney General's Office (PGR) accuses Gayer of spreading racist and segregationist ideas, inferiorizing and dehumanizing blacks and Afro-descendants by comparing them to monkeys.

[65] The deputy attorney general claims that the speeches by Gayer and Rodrigo Barbosa Arantes, made on a podcast with around 14 000 views, incited discrimination and racial prejudice.

[66] After the vote on tax reform in 2022, in WhatsApp fights with his party colleague, Vinícius Gurgel [pt] (until then a member of the PL in Amapá), his murder trial was resurrected, and he was provoked with a recommendation to join Alcoholics Anonymous (AA.).

[68] In 2022, after the vote on the MP for the Ministries, Gayer accused Sylvie Alves (until then a member of parliament for UNIÃO) of having "sold out" to the Lula government on social media.

[69] The MP replied: "For a man who has already killed two people in a drunken accident, he should be sensitive to some causes", and added: "In fact, he left the third paralyzed and never paid any attention", reinforcing the accusations the following day on Instagram.

[73] In August 2024, Gayer and Carla Zambelli were ordered by the São Paulo courts to pay compensation for moral damages to a teacher after sharing her phone number on social media.

[82] In March 2014, Frederico Gayer was sentenced to 12 years and six months in prison, to be served in a closed regime, for aggravated homicide in connection with the death of Hebert Resende.

[83] At the time, Frederico Gayer was serving as a police officer, appointed by the Goiás state government without having passed a public civil service exam.