Eduardo Bolsonaro, a former federal congressman and son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, is in Washington pushing for a new round of US sanctions against Brazilian officials. He and businessman Paulo Figueiredo met on Wednesday and Thursday (Sept. 16 and 17) with members of the White House and the State Department, the agency that runs US foreign policy. The push comes 17 days before Brazil's presidential election, set for October 4.
The central request, according to BBC News Brasil, is that the administration of Donald Trump restore financial sanctions on Justice Alexandre de Moraes of Brazil's Supreme Federal Court (STF) and extend them to Justices Flávio Dino and Gilmar Mendes. The measures would rely on the Global Magnitsky Act, which punishes foreigners for gross human rights violations and corruption. Moraes and his wife were sanctioned in July last year and removed from the list in December, after a deal between Presidents Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Trump. The law is named after Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in custody in 2009; first passed in 2012, it was expanded in 2016 to reach officials of any country.
What is at stake for Brazil
For Brazil, the trip carries an electoral edge. Speaking to reporters outside the State Department, Eduardo suggested that the STF might refuse to recognize a victory by his brother, presidential candidate Senator Flávio Bolsonaro of the right-wing Liberal Party (PL), although the court has made no such statement. "If they decide that Flávio's election is an act of coup-mongering, the US can perfectly well refuse to recognize the Brazilian election and also sanction those justices individually," he said, according to CNN Brasil. The remarks came two days after a heated STF session, on Tuesday (Sept. 15), on whether to open an investigation into Moraes over his ties to banker Daniel Vorcaro of Banco Master. The request came from Justice André Mendonça, and the session ended without a decision after Dino asked for more time. According to the BBC, the case was on the agenda of this week's meetings with State Department officials.
Interests and agenda in Washington
In the map of interests of the US capital, Moraes has long been a target of Trump allies such as businessman Elon Musk, who accuse the justice of censorship and of curbing free speech. The BBC reports that Eduardo and Figueiredo have contacts in a wing of the US government seen as more ideological and aligned with the right, which competes with a more pragmatic group for Trump's attention on Brazil. The two told CNN Brasil they had met with "high-ranking officials" but would not name them unless the US government discloses the meetings. On Tuesday, Republican Congressman Chris Smith, co-chair of the House of Representatives Human Rights Commission, sent a letter to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), a body of the Organization of American States (OAS), asking it to monitor the STF crisis and the relationship between Moraes and Vorcaro.
Fighting organized crime was also on the agenda. Eduardo and Figueiredo promised that, if Flávio Bolsonaro wins, Brazil would join the Shield of the Americas, Trump's anti-narcotics coalition of more than twenty countries in South America and the Caribbean, and said tariffs would be left for a future negotiation. The visit coincided with the release, by the State Department, of a report signed by Trump accusing Brazil's government of "failing" to fight the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) and Comando Vermelho (CV) crime factions.
Eduardo also called himself a "dissident", commenting on a document revealed on Thursday by the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo in which the Trump administration asked last year that Brazilian authorities allow "political dissidents" to take part in the 2026 election. At the time, during negotiations over US tariffs, the Brazilian side rejected the terms and noted that there are no dissidents in the country, which is a democracy. On the timing of any new sanctions, the former congressman was cautious: "We are not the ones telling the US what to do and when to do it. If that were the case, Moraes would still be sanctioned."