Brazilian Supreme Federal Court (STF) Justice Flávio Dino ordered the Federal Police on 27 October to investigate whether a donor network co-founded by JD Vance supplied money, services or staff to Flávio Bolsonaro's presidential campaign.

Dino's decision in ADPF 1178 directs police to establish what Rockbridge Network's representatives discussed with the businessmen Tallis Gomes and Pedro Sang, who paid foreign social media accounts to post Polymarket election odds favouring Bolsonaro, and whether the talks were tied to foreign interest in Brazil's rare earths and critical minerals. Police must also examine deliberate asymmetries and algorithmic manipulation by internet companies. The inquiry runs under STF supervision because, Dino wrote, members of Congress may be involved.

Brazilian law bars candidates from receiving, directly or indirectly, anything of monetary value of foreign origin, including advertising of any kind. Dino wrote that the ban covers any economically measurable advantage even where no money changes hands, and that the source of the resources decides whether a donation is foreign, whatever the nationality of the person who hands it over.

Bolsonaro lost the 25 October runoff to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. On the day of Dino's order he fled to the United States, Reuters confirmed through an ally of the senator and a US government source, after missing a deadline set by Justice Alexandre de Moraes to hand his passports to the Federal Police in a separate money-laundering inquiry involving the lawyer Willer Tomaz.

Rockbridge denies involvement. The network has said that Brazilians made false statements about their relationship with it and produced documents in its name without its knowledge or consent, and that its Brazilian company never operated. Bolsonaro's office has said the campaign received no foreign money or structure.

The order

The Brazilian Mining Institute (Ibram) brought ADPF 1178 in 2024 to stop municipalities suing mining companies in foreign courts over the Mariana and Brumadinho dam disasters, and Dino used it in August 2025 to rule that foreign laws and orders have no effect in Brazil without Brazilian approval. The Workers' Party (PT) petitioned in the same case for that sovereignty ruling to be applied to the election. Dino refused to let the party join as amicus curiae but requisitioned a police inquiry in a separate file, citing the overlap between the PT's petition and a complaint by Renan Santos, the Missão party's presidential candidate, at the Superior Electoral Court (TSE).

The order names Gomes and Sang as businessmen alleged to have intermediated financial support for Bolsonaro's candidacy and describes them as linked to Rockbridge in theory. Police must establish whether money, staff, services or other benefits were actually supplied, where they came from and whether the campaign used them.

On minerals, Dino told investigators to identify who made any proposal linking electoral support to rare earths and critical minerals, to whom, by what instrument and for what return. He cited Articles 20 and 176 of the Constitution, under which mineral resources belong to the federal government and may be mined only under an authorisation or concession granted in the national interest. If the talks involved buying rural land, police must check compliance with Law 5,709 of 1971, which restricts foreign ownership, including through front men.

The Federal Police must report the inquiry's number to the court. Dino sent the decision to 10 federal bodies, among them the Ministry of Mines and Energy, the Foreign Ministry, the Brazilian Intelligence Agency (Abin), the National Mining Agency, the Council for Financial Activities Control (Coaf), the Central Bank and the Federal Revenue Service, and gave notice to the Prosecutor General's Office.

Rockbridge in Brazil

Chris Buskirk, who co-founded Rockbridge with Vance, spoke to Brazilian businessmen during Brazil Week in New York this year at a meeting moderated by Gomes, the founder of Easy Taxi and G4 Educação and a member of the US network, Folha de S.Paulo reported. Documents Folha obtained offered Brazilian memberships at US$500,000 and US$1 million a year, payable in cash, cryptocurrency, shares or corporate structures, with a seat on a strategic council for the top tier. Another document described Rockbridge Brasil as a political venture fund for conservative media, youth training and support in Congress.

A separate presentation proposed a technology council of 23 members, 19 of them foreign, to discuss investment in technology, energy and mining, and was sent to Bolsonaro when he was a pre-candidate, Folha reported. It listed four Brazilians: Gomes, Mario Araripe of Casa dos Ventos, David Peixoto of Pax AI and Sang, described as chief executive of Rockbridge Brasil. Pax said Peixoto was never invited and never authorised the use of his name.

Rockbridge Brazil LLC was formed in Wyoming on 12 May 2026, with Chris Applegate named as its organiser, Amado Mundo found. The New York Times had reported in April that Applegate oversees Vance's relationships with donors and advises both the Republican National Committee and Rockbridge.

The filing lists the contact details of S. Wade Angus, a lawyer at Jones Day, and the registered agent Cogency Global. An organiser files a company's formation papers and is not necessarily its owner, and the published records name no members.

Rockbridge repeatedly denied to Intercept Brasil that it planned to operate in Brazil, then acknowledged the plan while saying it had been dropped. Intercept found that Applegate had visited South Korea in January, four months before the Wyoming company was formed.

Sang and Gomes

Sang, a Rio de Janeiro businessman who owns a tour operator, said he was introduced to Rockbridge by André Marinho, a school friend and the Novo party's candidate for governor of Rio de Janeiro. Six people close to the campaign told Folha that Sang helped prepare social media monitoring and polling reports for Bolsonaro's pre-campaign, helped choose its headquarters on Avenida República do Líbano in São Paulo and used a second-floor room there for meetings in English with US businessmen. A source told Amado Mundo that he introduced himself at the headquarters as "Pedro da Rockbridge".

Sang told Amado Mundo he never became a Rockbridge member and held no formal leadership role, while acknowledging he had acted for the group in Brazil. He denied channelling money to any campaign and said his name had been drawn into a dispute between Santos and Gomes.

Gomes confirmed he is a Rockbridge member but denied any management or representative role, any part in Bolsonaro's campaign and any donations to candidates or parties. In a statement after Dino's order he again said he holds no management, executive or representative position in Rockbridge in Brazil or abroad. He has called Santos's accusation a smokescreen and said he would sue him.

Santos said in September that Gomes and Sang had offered support to several candidates, approaching São Paulo Governor Tarcísio de Freitas before settling on Bolsonaro.

The minerals memorandum

Marinho, the son of Bolsonaro's Senate alternate Paulo Marinho, wrote a 22-page presentation in English titled "Flávio Bolsonaro | 2026 Campaign" under the slogan "Prosperity Partnership", Amado Mundo reported. It said a Bolsonaro government would make Brazil the West's main supplier and processing centre for critical minerals, with faster licensing than Lula's administration. Marinho wrote it weeks before travelling to the United States to meet Vance, according to the report.

Marinho said the study was a personal exercise kept on his own device, never sent or presented to US authorities, and that the campaign never asked him about foreign resources.

Bolsonaro said in a video on 26 April that countries interested in Brazil's rare earths should come and transfer technology. He met Donald Trump in the Oval Office on 26 May and later said he had discussed tariffs, rare earths and criminal gangs with Trump, Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Polymarket and the platforms

Santos and Missão asked the TSE on 23 September to act against five foreign accounts on X that published paid posts, mostly in Portuguese, showing Polymarket odds favourable to Bolsonaro, according to the complaint reproduced in Dino's order. Missão said Polymarket, which has been barred from offering its services in Brazil since April 2024, commissioned the posts. Polymarket's Instagram account for Brazil was taken down the same day after action by the Finance Ministry's betting secretariat and the Attorney General's Office.

Buskirk also co-founded the venture firm 1789 Capital, where Donald Trump Jr. is a partner. The firm invested in Polymarket in August 2025, and Trump Jr. joined Polymarket's advisory board. Dino told police to find who paid for the posts, where the money came from and whether anyone in Brazil knowingly took part.

Meta's Oversight Board said on 20 October that the excessive application of Meta's anti-fraud policies against Lula's advertising accounts was a failure that should have gone to specialist reviewers. Internal Meta messages obtained by Folha and quoted in Dino's order show staff acknowledging that Lula's Instagram account was barred from boosting feed posts for almost 24 hours on 9 October, and that Bolsonaro's profile appeared in search recommendations in breach of TSE rules while Lula's did not. The Electoral Prosecutor's Office told the TSE on 21 October that Meta had failed to comply with several items of the court's orders.

TSE Inspector General Ricardo Villas Bôas Cueva gave Meta and X 24 hours on 22 October to explain how they handle artificial intelligence, political content, electoral advertising and removals, under a daily fine of R$500,000 each. He said the evidence justified an investigation but did not yet prove the irregularities, and gave Bolsonaro and his running mate, Alfredo Gaspar, five days to respond.

Meta said its systems do not rank or distribute content by political ideology. It attributed the incidents to an anti-fraud review that wrongly disabled Lula's advertising account for just over an hour on 23 September, a view-count fault on 7 October that hit creators in more than 100 countries and a global advertising tool fault on 9 October.

The network abroad

Vance and Buskirk founded Rockbridge in 2019 after Peter Thiel introduced them, and its backers include Thiel and Rebekah Mercer, Reuters reported in 2024 from internal documents. US memberships cost US$100,000 to US$1 million, the 2024 budget was about US$75 million and Trump spoke by video to its April 2024 donor retreat in Palm Beach. 1789 Capital grew out of a 2022 Rockbridge summit, Reuters reported.

Rockbridge's Korean arm said on 19 January 2026 that Buskirk had visited Seoul from 13 to 15 January with Applegate, named as a Rockbridge senior adviser, and that the network was expanding into Japan, Taiwan, India, Brazil and Europe. Shinsegae chairman Chung Yong-jin is Rockbridge's Asia chairman. The Korean body, set up as a policy think tank with a different structure from the US network, is chaired by Kim Hae-young, a former Democratic Party leadership member, and its directors include former prime minister Kim Boo-kyum and former finance minister Bahk Jae-wan.

Vance spent two days in Hungary in April campaigning for Viktor Orbán, and Trump joined a Budapest rally by phone. Orbán lost the 12 April election to Péter Magyar's Tisza party.

President Javier Milei and Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno received Thiel at the Casa Rosada on 23 April with Matt Danzeisen of Thiel Capital and Matias Van Thienen of Founders Fund. Seven opposition deputies led by Hugo Yasky have filed a draft resolution asking Milei's government for the agenda of those meetings and whether Palantir, the company Thiel co-founded, has run pilots, held temporary licences or signed confidentiality agreements with any Argentine state body.

The ownership and payments

Rockbridge Brazil LLC’s ownership records, formation invoices and instructions to Jones Day could identify who commissioned the company and paid its costs. Contracts and payment records for the five X accounts’ paid partnerships could establish whether Polymarket or another advertiser commissioned the posts.

Bolsonaro has until 14 November to submit final campaign accounts covering both election rounds. Those disclosures must record campaign income, expenditure and contributions with a monetary value. They can be checked against contracts and invoices for the São Paulo headquarters and the monitoring and polling work attributed to Sang by campaign sources, establishing which services were declared and who paid for them.