Brazil’s foreign ministry has summoned the US chargé d’affaires after the embassy posted comments about the trial of former president Jair Bolsonaro, as relations between the two countries continue to deteriorate.
On Thursday, the embassy published a social media post in Portuguese criticising the supreme court justice Alexandre de Moraes, who is overseeing the cases against Bolsonaro, who is on trial over an alleged coup attempt.
The post read: “Minister Moraes is the chief architect of the censorship and persecution of Bolsonaro and his supporters. His flagrant human rights violations have led to sanctions under the Magnitsky Act, imposed by President Trump.
“Moraes’s allies in the judiciary and elsewhere are hereby warned not to support or facilitate his actions. We are monitoring the situation closely.”
The message was a translated repost of a statement by Darren Beattie, the US’s senior official for public diplomacy.
The Brazilian government viewed the message as a direct threat to the other supreme court justices presiding over Bolsonaro’s trials and – given that Trump has yet to appoint an ambassador to Brazil – summoned the acting head of mission, chargé d’affaires Gabriel Escobar.
It was the third time Escobar had been summoned since Donald Trump began publicly defending Bolsonaro, even citing the former Brazilian president’s prosecution over the 2022 coup attempt as one of the justifications for the steep tariffs imposed on Brazilian goods.