Brazil’s attorney general warns against US interference ahead of election

Before the presidential election

Brazil’s attorney general warns against US interference ahead of election

A report on US funding for critics of the Brazilian Supreme Court is causing a stir shortly before the presidential election. The government’s attorney general warns against foreign influence.

Brazil’s Attorney General Jorge Messias warned against intervention by the Supreme Court following a report on planned US funding for critics of the Supreme Court USA warned into the Brazilian institutions. The report is an important warning signal for Brazilian sovereignty, said Messias via Platform X. The presidential election will take place in the largest country in Latin America on Sunday.

According to research by the British newspaper “The Guardian”, one million dollars from a US State Department fund will be earmarked for a program entitled “Countering Lawfare and Censorship in Brazil”. The money is intended to finance civil society groups that accuse the Brazilian Supreme Court of exceeding its powers and of censorship. It is unclear whether the money has already been transferred or whether it has just been tied up in budgetary terms.

“This information is particularly worrying given Brazil’s electoral process and recent incidents in which external pressure has been exerted on our institutions,” Messias wrote. It should not be accepted that “foreign political interests attempt to intervene in the functioning of Brazilian institutions or to influence, directly or indirectly, the decisions that belong exclusively to the Brazilian people.”

The government’s Attorney General’s Office, headed by Messias, therefore asked the police and public prosecutor’s office to investigate possible recipients of the funds, as the Agência Brasil news agency reported.

The Supreme Court has recently been at the center of social debate – for example in connection with one of the country’s largest financial fraud cases, in which possible connections to a judge of the court are also being publicly discussed.

The Brazilian government has seen the danger of foreign influence in the presidential election for some time. According to Agência Brasil, the Brazilian secret service Abin referred to a risk from the USA and increasing pressure in a report prepared at the end of August Brazil.

The latest polls see incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the right-wing senator Flávio Bolsonaro – son of the former president Jair Bolsonaro – almost on par and well ahead of the other applicants. A runoff election is considered likely.

US President Donald Trump is considered a supporter of Jair Bolsonaro. The former head of state, who ruled between 2019 and 2022, was sentenced to more than 27 years in prison for his involvement in an attempted coup. For health reasons, the ex-military soldier is currently serving his sentence under house arrest.