She also promised a detailed account of how Mr. Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous leader, had evolved from a good guy to a menace. “Evo Morales was not the monster that he is today,” she said. She and her lawyers also said she has damaging information about the president’s right-hand man, Juan Ramón Quintana, the minister of the presidency.

But whether any of this intriguing material will be allowed to surface — and whether Ms. Zapata will get to defend herself and name names — is now in doubt. Last week, the government jailed her defense lawyer, Eduardo León, and an aunt, Pilar Guzmán, who had corroborated her assertion that Mr. Morales’s son was in fact alive. Mr. León, a prominent lawyer, has attended court hearings wearing a sign with the words “political prisoner.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Morales’s allies in Congress have been peddling bills that would curtail freedom of the press and regulate social media. What they fail to see is that Mr. Morales’s defeat in February resulted from damning facts, not critical news coverage. And they are clearly nervous about the insider account of corruption Ms. Zapata stands to tell if she gets her day in court.