{"id":300363,"date":"2025-08-04T12:00:44","date_gmt":"2025-08-04T11:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=300363"},"modified":"2025-08-02T06:04:14","modified_gmt":"2025-08-02T05:04:14","slug":"brazil-judge-hits-back-at-cowardly-and-treasonous-plot-behind-us-sanctions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2025\/08\/brazil-judge-hits-back-at-cowardly-and-treasonous-plot-behind-us-sanctions\/","title":{"rendered":"Brazil Judge Hits Back at \u2018Cowardly and Treasonous\u2019 Plot Behind US Sanctions"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

The supreme court judge Alexandre Moraes has said the move was engineered by Brazilians opposed to the current administration.
Photograph: Evaristo Sa\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

US put sanctions on Judge Alexandre de Moraes as an apparent move by Trump to help his ally Jair Bolsonaro.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

1 Aug 2025\u00a0<\/em>–\u00a0The supreme court judge presiding over the trial of Brazil\u2019s ex-president, Jair Bolsonaro<\/a>, has said a \u201ccowardly and treacherous\u201d plot is afoot to pave the way for another attack on the South American country\u2019s democracy.<\/p>\n

Judge Alexandre de Moraes was put under sanctions<\/a> by the US on Wednesday, as part of an apparent push by Donald Trump to help his ally Bolsonaro escape punishment for allegedly masterminding an attempted coup after losing the 2022 election to Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva. Trump also slapped a 50% tariff on Brazilian imports in response to what he called the \u201cwitch-hunt\u201d against the far-right former president.<\/p>\n

On Friday, Moraes, a shaven-headed Muay Thai practitioner known by the nickname Xand\u00e3o (\u2018Big Al\u2019), came out swinging. He told the court that Trump\u2019s tariffs and the \u201cspurious\u201d sanctions targeting him and other supreme court justices recently stripped of their US visas<\/a>, were part of an \u201cillegal and immoral\u201d ruse to obstruct justice that was being engineered by a group of Brazilian \u201ctraitors\u201d who had lobbied foreign authorities to carry out \u201chostile acts\u201d against the country\u2019s economy.<\/p>\n

Moraes said the campaign\u2019s objectives were identical to those of the 8 January 2023 riots in the capital, Bras\u00edlia, when hardcore Bolsonaro supporters stormed the supreme court, congress and presidential palace in an attempt to reverse his election defeat. Those rioters, Moraes said, had hoped to generate social chaos that would provoke a military intervention and make way for a coup.<\/p>\n

Two and a half years later, Moraes claimed that by lobbying foreign authorities to impose tariffs, the Brazilians behind the alleged plot were trying to trigger \u201can economic crisis, that would create a social and then a political crisis so that, once again, there might be social instability and the chance of a new putschist attack\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo the disappointment of these Brazilian traitors, [that] will not occur,\u201d the judge added.<\/p>\n

Moraes did not name the \u201csupposedly patriotic Brazilians\u201d he claimed were leading the supposed plot from overseas. But his comments were an unmistakable reference to Bolsonaro\u2019s third son, the congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, who moved to the US in February and has admitted to lobbying Trump officials to pressure Brazil over his father\u2019s plight. After Trump hit Moraes with sanctions this week, the younger Bolsonaro thanked him and said: \u201cI have a feeling of mission accomplished\u201d.<\/p>\n

The supreme court\u2019s coup trial is expected to conclude in the coming weeks and Bolsonaro \u2013 who has denied leading a power grab \u2013 is expected to be convicted and sentenced to up to 43 years, meaning the 70-year-old could spend the rest of his life in jail.<\/p>\n

Moraes vowed that the court\u2019s work would continue as normal, despite the \u201cham-fisted\u201d attempts at coercion. There would be no \u201ccowardly surrender\u201d from its members as they sought to defend their country\u2019s democracy.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\u2018Classic tinpot dictator\u2019: Trump exports his assault on democracy to Brazil<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Trump\u2019s attempt to pressure Brazil\u2019s government and judiciary over Bolsonaro\u2019s fate has sparked the most severe diplomatic crisis between Brazil and the US in decades. \u201cThe US government\u2019s interference in the Brazilian justice system is unacceptable,\u201d Lula said on Wednesday, after Trump signed his tariffs into force and hit Moraes with Magnitsky sanctions normally reserved for the perpetrators of severe human rights violations.<\/p>\n

Polls suggest most Brazilians oppose Trump\u2019s attempts to meddle in the functioning of their country\u2019s institutions.<\/p>\n

Steven Levitsky, a Harvard University political scientist and Latin America expert, believed Trump was trying to punish the government of a country which had \u201cdone a better job than the US by quite some distance at holding an authoritarian leader accountable\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, Brazil is more democratic than the United States,\u201d Levitsky said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBrazil\u2019s democracy is flawed. It\u2019s got problems. It\u2019s polarized. But it\u2019s a real functioning democracy and of course many Brazilians are pissed off that the Trump administration is trying to use trade policy to undermine the legal process there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Go to Original – theguardian.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1 Aug 2025\u00a0– US put sanctions on Judge Alexandre de Moraes as an apparent move by Trump to help his ally Jair Bolsonaro.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":300364,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[1176,573,547,393,651,1647,923,249,70],"class_list":["post-300363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latin-america-and-the-caribbean","tag-bolsonaro","tag-brasilia","tag-brazil","tag-coup","tag-justice","tag-riots","tag-sanctions","tag-trump","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300363"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":300366,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300363\/revisions\/300366"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}