JUDY WOODRUFF: A Brazilian Senate committee investigating President Jair Bolsonaro submitted their findings today to the country's attorney general, recommending the president face criminal charges for his handling of the pandemic.The inquiry is unprecedented and scathing, accusing a sitting head of state of crimes against humanity for Brazil's COVID death toll, the second highest in the world. Here's Nick Schifrin.

NICK SCHIFRIN: It is a memorial of grief, what activists call a shrine of shame, 600 tissues for more than 600,000 Brazilian lives lost. Their posters ask, who is responsible for this tragedy? The Senate's answer, largely one man. From the beginning, President Jair Bolsonaro opposed a nationwide lockdown,

blocked mask mandates and social distancing requirements, and denied the virus' gravity.

JAIR BOLSONARO, Brazilian President: In my case, given my athletic history, if I was to be infected, it would not necessarily concern me. I wouldn't feel anything other than at most a little cold or be under the weather.

NICK SCHIFRIN: He touted unproven therapies. After testing positive, he called antimalarial hydroxychloroquine a cure and, just this week, disparaged vaccines with lies.

JAIR BOLSONARO: The reports from United Kingdom government officials suggest that they are completely vaccinated. They are developing AIDS faster than what was expected.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Facebook and YouTube later took down this and other Bolsonaro videos. While spraying that fire hose of falsehood, Bolsonaro told Brazilians to stop whining and pushed to reopen the economy.

JAIR BOLSONARO: The collateral damage of the measures to fight the virus cannot be worse than the very illness.

NICK SCHIFRIN: Brazil ended up with the world's second highest official death toll, just after the U.S. Senator Omar Aziz led the inquiry.

OMAR AZIZ, President, Brazilian Parliamentary Inquiry Committee: The presidency is an institution.The presidency is not an office in a bar where you can say what you want while drinking beer and eating barbecue. Bolsonaro tells the Brazilian people about unfounded studies, when we ask to vaccinate the population.

NICK SCHIFRIN: A majority of the commission's members endorsed the report's recommendations to accuse Bolsonaro of crimes against humanity, inciting an epidemic, charlatanism, and misuse of public funds. The 1, 200-page document found Bolsonaro's government omitted and opted to act in a non-technical and reckless manner in the fight against the pandemic, deliberately exposing the population to a concrete risk of mass infection in order to achieve herd immunity. Today, the report was submitted to Brazil's Attorney General Augusto Aras.He is a Bolsonaro appointee and doesn't have to pursue charges. Bolsonaro himself has repeatedly dismissed the committee and its report as politically motivated.