Brazil: The judge in charge of the Bolsonaro trial stands up to Washington – 08/02/2025 at 04:21

The judge of the Supreme Court of Brazil in charge of the trial of ex-president Jair Bolsonaro said on Friday that he was going to “ignore” the sanctions imposed on him by the Trump administration, warning that Brazilian justice would not comply with “threats”.

Strong voice and cold anger, Alexandre de Moraes, a magistrate as powerful as criticized, made these words during a highly anticipated solemn session of the court in Brasilia.

On Wednesday, the US government announced sanctions against him, but also a punitive surcharge on Brazilian products exported to the United States. Reason: a supposed “witch hunt” against the former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022), currently tried for alleged attempted coup.

In his speech, the judge who became the bane of camp Bolsonaro said he was going to “ignore the sanctions that were imposed and continue to work”.

According to him, “the Supreme Court will be absolutely inflexible in the defense of national sovereignty and its commitment to democracy”.

On Wednesday, the US Treasury Department imposed economic sanctions for him as part of the Magnitsky law, usually used against foreign personalities in cases of human rights or corruption.

Donald Trump’s government accuses him of taking advantage of his position to “target political opponents, including ex-president Jair Bolsonaro, journalists, American social networks and other American and international companies”.

The magistrate, and the Supreme Court in general, adopted a very firm posture in the fight against disinformation on platforms.

– “open to dialogue” –

Since the start of the crisis opened by the first American announcements in early July, Donald Trump and the Brazilian left president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva have not spoken.

“He can talk to me when he wants,” the White House tenant said on Friday in response to a journalist.

“I like the Brazilian people,” he continued, while denouncing the actions of “those who direct Brazil”.

Shortly after, Lula seemed to answer him by writing on the social network X: “We have always been opened to dialogue”. “It is the Brazilians and their institutions that define the guidelines of Brazil,” he insisted.

Faced with American pressures, the Brazilian government has defended the country’s “sovereignty” in recent weeks. Seeing an “injustice” in customs duties of 50% inflicted on its exports from August 6, despite numerous exemptions, he relies on negotiations to obtain their case.

The question remains whether a contact between the two leaders will eventually be formed.

Friday, demonstrations against this surcharge gathered a few hundred people in front of the United States Embassy in Brasilia and the consulate in Sao Paulo, as well as in Rio de Janeiro.

In the Sao Paulo megalopolis, demonstrators burned a portrait of Donald Trump, wearing devil’s horns. On a large green and yellow banner, colors of Brazil, you could read: “Sovereignty is not negotiable.”

– “putschist attack” –

The sanctions imposed by Washington notably lead to the freezing of possible assets detained in the United States by judge Moraes, already deprived recently of visa in this country. He “has no property in the United States,” said AFP a source of the high jurisdiction.

Even more than the Trump government, the magistrate attacked those who, in Brazil on Friday, “acted with cowardice and treated in order to submit the Supreme Court to a foreign state”.

Without appointing him, he thus targeted Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of the ex-president, who put his mandate as a deputy to exercise in Washington an effective lobbying with the American administration in Washington against the Brazilian authorities, and in particular the judiciary.

Alexandre de Moraes also argued that those who, in the Bolsonaro camp, seek to “stimulate an economic crisis” want “to cause social instability allowing a new putschist attack”.

In his trial at the Supreme Court, Jair Bolsonaro is accused of conspired with close collaborators to maintain himself in power despite his defeat in the 2022 election against Lula. He risks more than 40 years in prison.