More than $175 million in State Department awards aimed at Brazil supreme court
Brazil’s attorney general said Thursday that foreign meddling in his country’s institutions and democracy “cannot be tolerated” after a Guardian report detailed how the Trump administration was pushing to direct funds to a campaign against the Brazilian supreme court. Writing on X, Jorge Messias called the Guardian’s report “an important alert for Brazilian sovereignty” and added that the information was “especially serious in light of Brazil’s electoral process and the recent episodes of external pressure on our institutions.”
Messias expanded: “Disagreements between governments are inherent to international relations. What cannot be tolerated is for foreign political interests to seek to interfere in the functioning of Brazilian institutions or to influence, directly or indirectly, choices that belong exclusively to the Brazilian people.” He continued: “It is the right of each generation of Brazilians to freely decide their destiny, protect their institutions, and hand over to their children a country that does not accept decisions about Brazil being made outside of Brazil. Our democracy belongs to Brazilians. And so it must remain.”
According to the Brazilian television network GloboNews, the attorney general’s office on Thursday filed a criminal complaint to investigate potential wrongdoing in response to the Guardian story.
The Guardian reported that the Trump administration was pushing to direct more than $175 million of the State Department’s flagship human rights fund to a slate of awards. Those include a $40 million grant for an anti-communism fund, support for a group advancing white Afrikaner rights in South Africa, and the campaign against Brazil’s supreme court. A $1 million award titled “Countering lawfare and censorship in Brazil” would fund civil society groups opposing what the proposal describes as judicial overreach and censorship by Brazil’s supreme court.
Brazil is three days away from its presidential election — which Washington has been accused of trying to influence — where Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, whom the Guardian describes as the leftwing incumbent, faces Flávio Bolsonaro, a Trump ally whom the Guardian describes as his “far-right rival.” The pair are roughly even in the polls, according to the newspaper.
According to the Guardian, what the newspaper calls Bolsonaro’s far-right movement considers the supreme court — and in particular Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who oversaw former president Jair Bolsonaro’s trial — its greatest foe. The newspaper reported that Moraes is widely seen to have played a key role in thwarting what the Guardian characterized as Jair Bolsonaro’s “authoritarian plot,” which it said culminated in the 8 January 2023 riots in Brasília, despite concerns the Guardian noted about the judge overstepping his constitutional authority in his “crusade to protect democracy.”
During riots the Guardian described as rightwing, supporters of Jair Bolsonaro trashed the presidential palace, congress and supreme court, with the court sustaining the most severe damage, according to the newspaper. Bolsonaro supporters continue to claim their leader’s imprisonment is unjust and that he is the victim of what they describe as a politically motivated sham driven by a corrupt “judicial dictatorship,” the Guardian reported.
Jair Bolsonaro was convicted and handed a 27-year sentence for trying to seize power after losing the 2022 election to Lula, according to the Guardian. Trump called the prosecution a “witch-hunt.”
The criticism of Moraes and the supreme court has been bolstered in recent months by a scandal linking several judges, including him, to Daniel Vorcaro, the playboy banker at the centre of Brazil’s biggest banking scandal, the Guardian reported. According to the newspaper, the banker reportedly gave the Bolsonaro family more than £9 million, supposedly to produce a biopic about Jair Bolsonaro starring Jim Caviezel, who played Jesus in Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ. On the eve of Vorcaro’s arrest last November, Flávio Bolsonaro messaged him to say: “Brother, I’ll always be with you,” the Guardian reported.
Vorcaro is being held in federal police custody in Brasília. His legal team has consistently denied wrongdoing, according to the Guardian. On Wednesday, his lawyers said he was not involved in “any kind of illicit activity or criminal practice.”
Last year, the Trump administration used a campaign of sanctions and tariffs in what the Guardian described as a failed attempt to pressure Lula’s government and the supreme court over the coup trial of former president Jair Bolsonaro. In recent months, the Trump administration has again been accused of meddling in Brazilian affairs, this time by using tariffs and the designation of two Brazilian organised crime groups as foreign terrorist organisations to bolster Flávio Bolsonaro’s campaign and weaken Lula, the Guardian reported.