The U.S. Treasury Department has sanctioned Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, accusing him of orchestrating politically motivated investigations against former President Jair Bolsonaro. The sanctions, announced on Wednesday, follow President Trump’s threat of tariffs on Brazilian goods, citing ‘unjust’ and politically biased proceedings against Bolsonaro. The Treasury Department alleges that de Moraes engaged in arbitrary detentions, suppressed freedom of speech, and targeted political opponents.
De Moraes, a Brazilian Supreme Federal Court Justice, has been leading the case against Bolsonaro, steering key developments in the case as its official ‘rapporteur,’ which followed an 884-page report by the Brazilian Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet detailing a scheme alleging Bolsonaro and 33 others participated in a plan to remain in power despite losing to current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
The case against Bolsonaro alleges the attempted coup involved the systematic sowing of national distrust in the electoral system among the populace, drafting a decree to give the plot a veneer of legality, and pressuring top military brass to go along with the plan and inciting a riot in the capital. A panel of justices on Brazil’s Supreme Court accepted the charges against Bolsonaro in March, and ultimately ordered the former leader to stand trial. All five justices ruled in favor of accepting the charges, which included accusations involving a plan to poison Bolsonaro’s successor and kill a Supreme Court judge.
Rumors the U.S. might levy sanctions targeting De Moraes were reported earlier this month as Bolsonaro’s son, Eduardo, was reportedly working closely with the White House to push the United States to impose sanctions. The Trump administration’s sanctions against De Moraes stem from the president’s first-term Executive Order 13818, which declared a national emergency with respect to human rights abuses and corruption around the world. The 2017 executive order, according to the Treasury Department, builds on the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act passed in 2016, which allows the president and the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control to impose sanctions on foreign officials responsible for human rights violations.