The Brazilian Intelligence Agency (Agência Brasileira de Inteligência, or Abin) rated the risk of US pressure on Sunday's presidential election "critical" in a confidential report at the end of August. In the final week of the campaign the State Department earmarked US$1 million for a programme it calls "Countering Lawfare and Censorship in Brazil", aimed at the Supreme Court that jailed the opposition candidate's father for plotting a coup. Secretary of State Marco Rubio overrode a US senator's hold on the money. The US shut every US consular post in Brazil on 2 October over a security threat that the Federal Police searched for and did not find. Folha de S.Paulo reported that operatives tied to the Rockbridge Network, co-founded by Vice-President JD Vance, were advising Flávio Bolsonaro's campaign. Brazil's Attorney General has asked federal police and prosecutors to investigate the grant as possible "external interference in internal affairs of the Brazilian state". Trump set a 50 per cent tariff on Brazilian goods in 2025 to demand an end to Jair Bolsonaro's coup trial, his administration sanctioned the judge who led the trial, Bolsonaro's lawyers sought a prison visit for a State Department adviser and Trump received Flávio Bolsonaro at the White House and granted his request to designate Brazil's two largest gangs as terrorists two days later. Abin told French and German officials in September it had also confirmed Russian interference, and Nova Resistência, a Brazilian group the State Department has called a creation of the Russian government, spread a Kremlin-network fabrication this year. The United States backed the 1964 coup that ended Brazilian democracy for 21 years, and in the past 20 months the Trump administration has endorsed, funded or campaigned for right-wing candidates in Argentina, Honduras, Hungary and Poland and courted Germany's far-right AfD.
The State Department grant
The Guardian reported on 30 September that the State Department had set aside US$1 million from its Human Rights and Democracy Fund for a programme called "Countering Lawfare and Censorship in Brazil", to support civil society groups opposed to what the programme describes as judicial overreach by the Supreme Federal Court. The grant is one of 43 awards worth US$176.9 million. Secretary of State Marco Rubio signed a memo overriding holds placed on the funds by Senator Jeanne Shaheen, according to The Rio Times' account of the report. The State Department said the programmes remained under "active deliberation" and subject to "a standard and rigorous vetting process".
The Supreme Federal Court convicted Jair Bolsonaro in September 2025 of plotting a coup after his 2022 defeat and sentenced him to 27 years and three months. Three of its justices sit on the seven-member Superior Electoral Court, which runs the election and certifies the result. Flávio Bolsonaro, his son, is the main opposition candidate on Sunday.
Attorney General Jorge Messias sent a criminal complaint on 1 October to Andrei Rodrigues, director-general of the Federal Police, and Paulo Gonet, the Prosecutor General. It asks investigators to identify who is distributing the money in Brazil, who receives it and whether it has influenced political debate. "What cannot be tolerated is for foreign political interests to seek to interfere in the functioning of Brazilian institutions," Messias said. The complaint said the inquiry could reveal "a structure of external interference in internal affairs of the Brazilian state", with added risk during the election. Gonet decides whether to open a criminal inquiry.
The consular shutdown
The US Mission in Brazil posted on 2 October: "Consular Services in the U.S. Embassy and Consulates in Brazil will be suspended starting today, October 2 due to security concerns." The suspension covers the embassy in Brasília and the consulates in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Recife and Porto Alegre, according to UPI. Staff were told to work remotely. "We are working closely with our Brazilian counterparts to address the security concerns," a State Department spokesperson said. The embassy told SBT News: "The Trump Administration prioritizes security and protection of American citizens."
Australia closed its embassy in Brasília the same day. Ambassador Sophie Davies cited the US alert, mentioned the risk of terrorism and advised Australians to avoid US diplomatic facilities, Metrópoles reported.
Brazil's Federal Police served two search and seizure warrants in São Paulo and around the Federal District over "suspected plans that could threaten US diplomatic facilities" and found no evidence of a threat or of suspects linked to criminal organisations, Al Jazeera and Reuters reported. CNN Brasil reported that the alert began with a digital threat against US and allied English-speaking missions during the election period. Military police cordoned off the area around the US consulate in São Paulo, UPI reported.
Edinho Silva, president of Lula's Workers' Party, called the closures "unprecedented". "It makes no sense at all. It's one of Trump's ways of trying to influence Brazilian public opinion," he said. Forças Terrestres reported that the presidential palace's diplomatic staff had been told in advance and tried to keep the incident from becoming a political story. The Federal Police reported its findings to the presidential palace and the Foreign Ministry, and people in Lula's campaign treat the closure as a possible "psychological operation" timed for the vote, Metrópoles columnist Igor Gadelha reported on 2 October.
Revista Fórum reported on 2 October, citing unnamed sources in the Federal Police and Abin, that both agencies sent alerts through the Brazilian Intelligence System describing a US "psychological operation" designed to spread "dissonant information", frighten voters into staying home and help Flávio Bolsonaro, in coordination with Eduardo Bolsonaro. An unnamed ambassador in the Lula government confirmed receiving the alerts, the magazine reported.
Rockbridge and the campaign
Folha de S.Paulo reported on 1 October, based on interviews with six people around the campaign, that businessmen connected to the Rockbridge Network had supported Flávio Bolsonaro's campaign with reports and advice. Pedro Sang, named as "CEO of Rockbridge Brasil" in internal documents, runs SNG Consult Empresarial Ltda, a company founded in May 2026 that produced social media monitoring reports and electoral research for the campaign and helped choose its headquarters on Avenida República do Líbano in São Paulo, according to Folha. Those services are absent from the accounts the campaign filed with the Superior Electoral Court, Folha reported. The campaign said it "received no foreign funds or infrastructure". Tallis Gomes, a businessman named in the report, said he "does not integrate electoral campaigns, did not make donations nor intermediated foreign resources". Sang told CNN Brasil the Rockbridge initiative in Brazil "never advanced and is suspended since May". Rockbridge said in September that its Brazilian company "never operated nor received resources".
André Marinho, a candidate for governor of Rio de Janeiro and son of Flávio Bolsonaro's Senate alternate, wrote a 22-page presentation dated 19 March 2026 titled "Prosperity Partnership" that set out a US-Brazil alliance on critical minerals and rare earths under a Flávio Bolsonaro government, the Brazilian outlet Amado Mundo reported. It describes Brazil as "the principal supplier and processing hub for critical minerals aligned with the West" and projects US$50 billion to US$100 billion in investment. Flávio Bolsonaro told CPAC in Texas on 28 March that Brazil was "the solution" for US independence from Chinese minerals, and Marinho met Vance on 13 April, CNN Brasil reported. Marinho said the document was a "hypothetical scenario exercise" with no relation to the campaign. The Workers' Party cited the presentation, the CPAC speech and the Vance meeting in a complaint to the Supreme Federal Court on 13 September seeking an investigation into foreign funding of Flávio Bolsonaro's campaign. Natalia Viana of Agência Pública wrote on 14 September that the Rockbridge funding question "may be the biggest scandal of the election", and the electoral lawyer Fernando Neisser told Pública that "foreign resources in Brazilian campaigns are absolutely prohibited".
Tariffs aimed at the Bolsonaro trial
Trump wrote to Lula on 9 July 2025 announcing a 50 per cent tariff on Brazilian goods and said of Jair Bolsonaro's prosecution: "This Trial should not be taking place. It is a Witch Hunt that should end IMMEDIATELY!" "The way that Brazil has treated former President Bolsonaro, a Highly Respected Leader throughout the World during his term, including by the United States, is an international disgrace," he wrote. He signed an executive order on 30 July 2025 declaring a national economic emergency under a 1977 law and adding a 40 per cent duty to the existing 10 per cent from about 6 August, with exemptions for aircraft, energy products, fertilisers and some metals. The United States ran a US$6.8 billion trade surplus with Brazil the year before, AP reported.
Eduardo Bolsonaro, the former president's son, called the duties the "Moraes Tariff" and took credit for them. "Over the past few months, we have maintained intense dialogue with officials from President Trump's administration," he said in August 2025.
AtlasIntel recorded Lula's approval rising from 47.3 per cent to 50.2 per cent between June and July 2025 as the tariffs landed. Trump removed the 40 per cent duty on Brazilian beef, coffee, cocoa and fruit on 20 November 2025 after US coffee prices rose by up to 40 per cent.
The US Trade Representative announced a separate 25 per cent duty on Brazilian goods on 15 July 2026, effective 22 July, less than three months before the vote. It cites Brazilian court orders against US social media companies, the central bank's Pix payment system, ethanol tariffs, intellectual property, anti-corruption enforcement and illegal deforestation. Lula called the new tariffs interference in Brazil's affairs, Axios reported, and his office called them a "lamentable milestone", according to Time.
Trump announced in September 2026 a plan to import 300,000 tonnes of tariff-free beef from Brazil and Argentina. He met Joesley Batista, who shares control of JBS, the world's largest meatpacker, the day before the announcement, The Wall Street Journal reported. Batista is one of the businessmen named in the Rockbridge Network's Brazil documents, according to Jornal do Brasil.
Sanctions and visa bans on the judges
Secretary of State Marco Rubio ordered visa revocations on 18 July 2025 "for Moraes and his allies on the court, as well as their immediate family members, effective immediately", accusing Justice Alexandre de Moraes of running a "persecution and censorship complex". O Globo reported that seven other Supreme Court justices lost their visas. The two justices Jair Bolsonaro appointed, André Mendonça and Nunes Marques, and Justice Luiz Fux were spared, Al Jazeera reported.
The Treasury sanctioned Moraes under the Global Magnitsky Act on 30 July 2025. "Moraes has taken it upon himself to be judge and jury in an unlawful witch hunt against US and Brazilian citizens and companies," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said. The Treasury sanctioned Moraes's wife, Viviane Barci de Moraes, and her family's company Lex Instituto de Estudos Jurídicos on 22 September 2025, 11 days after the Supreme Court convicted Bolsonaro. The State Department revoked the visas of six more Brazilian officials the same day, among them Jorge Messias, now the Attorney General investigating the US$1 million grant. Bessent said more officials could be sanctioned "if necessary". The Treasury lifted the sanctions on Moraes and his wife on 12 December 2025, citing an amnesty bill passed by Brazil's lower house as a sign that "lawfare conditions in Brazil are improving", CBS News reported.
Backing Bolsonaro in custody
The State Department's Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs posted on 5 August 2025, after Moraes placed Bolsonaro under house arrest for breaching a ban on social media use: "Putting even more restrictions on Jair Bolsonaro's ability to defend himself in public is not a public service. Let Bolsonaro speak!" It said the United States "condemns Moraes' order imposing house arrest on Bolsonaro and will hold accountable all those aiding and abetting sanctioned conduct".
Federal police took Bolsonaro into custody on 22 November 2025 after his ankle monitor was tampered with, days before he began serving his sentence. Trump called the arrest "too bad", Anadolu Agency reported. Christopher Landau, the deputy secretary of state, called the arrest "provocative and unnecessary", the Washington Examiner reported.
Bolsonaro's lawyers asked the Supreme Court in March 2026 to let Darren Beattie, a State Department official and Trump adviser, visit him in Papuda prison in Brasília on 16 or 17 March with an interpreter. Beattie was fired from Trump's first-term White House in 2018 after reports that he had spoken at a conference attended by white nationalists, Al Jazeera reported. Moraes refused the visit on 12 March, ruling that it "has not been reported to Brazilian diplomatic authorities and is not on Darren Beattie's official schedule", which listed a critical minerals forum in São Paulo on 18 March. Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira said the visit could be "undue interference" in Brazil's internal affairs. Brazil then revoked Beattie's visa. "That American guy who said he was coming here to visit Jair Bolsonaro, he was prohibited from visiting, and I prohibited him from coming to Brazil as long as they don't unblock the visas of my health minister," Lula said, according to Metrópoles. The US had restricted the visas of Health Minister Alexandre Padilha and his family. Moraes moved Bolsonaro to house arrest on health grounds on 24 March 2026 after he was admitted to hospital with pneumonia.
The Bolsonaro sons and the White House
Eduardo Bolsonaro took leave from Brazil's Chamber of Deputies in March 2025 and moved to the United States. "When I exiled myself to the U.S., I made my intention very clear: to sanction Alexandre de Moraes," he said. He met Republican members of Congress including Brian Mast, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Chris Smith, María Elvira Salazar and Cory Mills, Responsible Statecraft reported. Jair Bolsonaro said in May 2025 that he had put "quite a lot" of money in Eduardo's hands, about R$2 million (US$350,000), to fund the campaign. The Chamber stripped Eduardo of his seat on 18 December 2025 for missing more than 80 per cent of sessions. The Supreme Court convicted him unanimously on 16 June 2026 of coercion during judicial proceedings over his US lobbying and sentenced him to four years and two months.
Trump received Flávio Bolsonaro, Eduardo and the commentator Paulo Figueiredo at the White House on 26 May 2026 for nearly two hours, in a meeting Rubio helped broker, according to Americas Society/Council of the Americas. Flávio's polling had fallen after the release of audio in which he asked a banker to finance a film about his father. He asked Trump to designate the PCC and Comando Vermelho as foreign terrorist organisations. "They control entire territories in Brazil by force," he said. They also discussed tariffs, rare earths, Brazil joining Trump's Shield of the Americas in January 2027 and Jair Bolsonaro's health, Breitbart reported. "We've got to help these guys," Trump said afterwards, according to Congresso em Foco. Flávio Bolsonaro returned to the White House the next day and met Rubio and Vice-President JD Vance, Folha de S.Paulo reported. The State Department designated the PCC and Comando Vermelho as terrorist organisations on 28 May, two days after the Trump meeting, effective 5 June, and Flávio Bolsonaro took credit for the decision in the Brazilian media, Time reported. A Datafolha poll in June found 59 per cent of Brazilians supported classifying the two gangs as terrorists and 74 per cent rejected US interference in Brazil.
Brazil denied visas to two State Department officials at the end of July 2026, accusing them of trying to interfere in the election, the BBC reported. The State Department revoked the visa of Brazil's ambassador to the United States, Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti, on 4 August, and a US official told Reuters she would get it back once Brazil approved Trump's nominee for ambassador, Daniel Perez, a Florida state legislator close to Rubio.
The money
Jair Bolsonaro gave Eduardo about R$2 million to fund his campaign in the United States. The Rockbridge Network proposed Brazilian memberships of US$500,000 to US$1 million a year. The State Department set aside US$1 million for its "Countering Lawfare and Censorship in Brazil" programme. Foreign accounts paid for posts on X promoting Flávio Bolsonaro between 18 and 21 September, according to the Workers' Party petition to the Superior Electoral Court.
Meta and the Lula campaign's ads
Meta, the US company that owns Facebook and Instagram, disabled the Lula campaign's advertising account, "Eleições 2026 Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva Presidente", on 23 September, 11 days before the vote, and briefly took down Lula's Facebook page, Poder360 and The Rio Times reported. The block stopped the campaign launching new paid posts on Facebook and Instagram and using the custom audiences that allow microtargeting, The Brazilian Report reported. Meta told the campaign that "some of your activities do not follow our rules".
The Workers' Party and its coalition, Brasil Pronto pra Mais, appealed to Meta on 24 September, called the block "unilateral, unmotivated and lacking any objective justification" and demanded that the account be restored within six hours. Éden Valadares, the party's communications secretary, said the campaign could take the case to the Superior Electoral Court. "The evidence of interference is all there, and it keeps repeating itself," he said. Meta later restored the account, The Rio Times reported. Brazil's paid political advertising period ran from 16 August to 1 October.
Meta, Trump and Israel
Mark Zuckerberg announced on 7 January 2025 that Meta would end third-party fact-checking in the United States and said Latin American countries had "secret courts that can order companies to quietly take things down". João Brant, Brazil's secretary for digital policy, said the shift showed Meta was willing to "serve as a platform for Trump's agenda" and called it "an invitation to far-right activism". "The statement is explicit. It signals that the company does not accept the sovereignty of countries over the functioning of the digital environment," he said. Global Witness submitted 10 Portuguese-language ads containing false voting information to Facebook before Brazil's 2022 election, and Facebook approved all 10.
Meta gave US$1 million to Trump's inaugural committee and added Dana White, the UFC chief executive and a Trump friend, to its board on 6 January 2025. Meta agreed on 29 January 2025 to pay US$25 million to settle Trump's lawsuit over the suspension of his accounts after the 6 January 2021 attack on the Capitol, with US$22 million going to his future presidential library. Trump raised the lawsuit with Zuckerberg over dinner at Mar-a-Lago in November 2024, Fortune reported, and Zuckerberg sat in the Capitol Rotunda at the inauguration. Zuckerberg asked Attorney General Pam Bondi on 12 March 2025 how to "effectively speak" to Trump, hours before meeting the president and a month before Meta's antitrust trial against the Federal Trade Commission began, ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl wrote. Judge James Boasberg ruled on 18 November 2025 that Meta did not have to sell Instagram or WhatsApp. Zuckerberg pledged at least US$600 billion in US data centres and infrastructure through 2028 at a White House dinner with Trump on 4 September 2025. His personal wealth rose by US$1.9 billion in Trump's first year back in office, the Financial Times calculated.
Trump threatened "substantial" tariffs on 25 August 2025 against countries whose rules on technology companies he said were "designed to harm, or discriminate against, American technology". The US Trade Representative's 25 per cent duty on Brazil, in force since 22 July 2026, cites Brazilian court orders against US social media companies.
Andrew Bosworth, who ran Facebook's advertising business during the 2016 campaign and is now Meta's chief technology officer, wrote in an internal memo published by The New York Times in January 2020 that Facebook was responsible for Trump's election because "he ran the single best digital ad campaign I've ever seen from any advertiser". Cambridge Analytica, which worked for Trump's 2016 campaign, harvested data from up to 87 million Facebook users, and the Federal Trade Commission fined Facebook US$5 billion in July 2019 over privacy violations. Bosworth called Cambridge Analytica's methods "pure snake oil".
Jordana Cutler has been Meta's director of public policy for Israel since 2016 and added the Jewish diaspora to her portfolio in 2020. She previously spent about five years as an adviser in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office, starting as deputy to Ron Dermer, and three years at the Israeli embassy in Washington. The Intercept reported in October 2024 that Cutler sought to suppress pro-Palestinian content by invoking Meta's "Dangerous Organizations and Individuals" policy, including posts by Students for Justice in Palestine. Human Rights Watch reviewed 1,050 cases of removed or suppressed Palestine-related content from more than 60 countries after 7 October 2023, found that 1,049 involved peaceful support for Palestine and called Meta's censorship "systemic" in a report published on 21 December 2023. Drop Site News reported in April 2025, citing internal Meta data, that Meta complied with 94 per cent of the Israeli government's takedown requests after 7 October 2023. Meta told Human Rights Watch that its response to the war followed its human rights commitments.
US statements
Trump told reporters on 1 October that he was following Brazil's election "very closely" and called the country "very important". He later called Flávio Bolsonaro a "smart young man", according to Time. Flávio Bolsonaro has pledged that Brazil would join Trump's "Shield of the Americas" initiative if he wins, Axios reported.
Anna Kelly, a White House spokesperson, told Time: "Conservative leaders are winning elections across the Western Hemisphere on their own merit because everyone sees the success of President Trump's policies. These claims are nonsense."
Lula said on 22 September: "I have already told President Trump it is very important that the U.S. do not interfere in Brazil's elections. Brazilian elections are the concern of the Brazilian people. American elections are the concern of the American people."
Senators Jeanne Shaheen, Tim Kaine and Peter Welch wrote to Rubio on 29 September asking him to commit to recognising results certified by Brazil's electoral courts. They wrote that the administration's pressure "first escalated sharply during the summer of 2025, with the Administration deploying tariffs and targeted sanctions to attempt to shape the Brazilian Supreme Court's verdict" in Jair Bolsonaro's coup trial. Time reported that the State Department had appointed Darren Beattie as a senior adviser on Brazil; Beattie has called Justice Alexandre de Moraes a "key architect of the censorship and persecution complex directed against Bolsonaro".
The US record: coups and dictatorships
The CIA directed the August 1953 coup that overthrew Mohammad Mosaddegh, Iran's elected prime minister, after he nationalised the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. An internal CIA history declassified in 2013 states that the coup "was carried out under CIA direction as an act of US foreign policy". The Shah ruled until the 1979 revolution.
The CIA's operation PBSUCCESS overthrew Guatemala's elected president, Jacobo Árbenz, in June 1954, after his land reform expropriated unused land held by the United Fruit Company. The State Department's own historians published the CIA's role in a retrospective Foreign Relations of the United States volume in 2003, after a 1983 edition had left it out.
Lyndon Johnson told aides in March 1964 "I think we ought to take every step that we can, be prepared to do everything that we need to do" to support a military move against João Goulart, Brazil's elected president, according to records published by the National Security Archive. Ambassador Lincoln Gordon recommended the "clandestine delivery of arms of non-US origin" to the plotters, and Operation Brother Sam sent a naval task force and a fuel tanker towards Brazil's coast. Goulart was overthrown on 1 April 1964. Brazil's National Truth Commission documented 434 people killed or disappeared under the dictatorship that followed, named 377 people responsible and concluded in December 2014 that the abuses were crimes against humanity carried out as government policy. The military ruled until 1985.
Richard Nixon ordered the CIA in September 1970 to stop Salvador Allende taking office in Chile, and CIA director Richard Helms wrote in his notes of the meeting: "make the economy scream". The Senate's Church Committee found the CIA spent about US$8 million on covert action in Chile between 1970 and the coup of 11 September 1973 that brought Augusto Pinochet to power. Chilean commissions documented more than 2,000 people killed or disappeared and at least 27,255 victims of torture under Pinochet, who ruled until 1990, according to the Center for Justice and Accountability.
Henry Kissinger, then secretary of state, told Argentina's foreign minister, César Guzzetti, in June 1976, three months after the military seized power: "We want you to succeed. We do not want to harass you," and "If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly," according to declassified memos published by the National Security Archive. A State Department memo of August 1976 recorded that Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay had "established Operation Condor to find and kill terrorists ... in their own countries and in Europe". A court in Rome sentenced five former officials to life imprisonment for Condor killings in 2017.
The push abroad today
The National Security Strategy published by the White House in December 2025 says: "America encourages its political allies in Europe to promote this revival of spirit, and the growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed gives cause for great optimism." It lists "cultivating resistance to Europe's current trajectory within European nations" as a goal.
JD Vance told the Munich Security Conference on 14 February 2025 that there was "no room for firewalls", the term Germans use for the mainstream parties' refusal to govern with the Alternative für Deutschland, and met its co-leader Alice Weidel nine days before Germany's federal election. "This democracy was just called into question by the US vice president," Boris Pistorius, Germany's defence minister, said.
Kristi Noem, then homeland security secretary, told CPAC Poland on 27 May 2025, days before the presidential runoff: "If you elect a leader who will work with President Trump, the Polish people will have a strong ally. You will continue to have a US military presence here." Karol Nawrocki, the nationalist candidate, won on 1 June 2025.
Trump said in October 2025 of Argentina's US$20 billion US currency swap: "If he loses, we are not going to be generous with Argentina," days before Javier Milei's party faced midterm elections. Before Honduras voted on 30 November 2025 he endorsed Nasry Asfura, wrote that if Asfura lost "the United States will not be throwing good money after bad", and pardoned Juan Orlando Hernández, the former Honduran president serving 45 years in a US prison for drug trafficking.
Rubio told Viktor Orbán in Budapest on 16 February 2026: "President Trump is deeply committed to your success because your success is our success." Vance joined a rally with Orbán on 7 April, and Trump wrote two days before Hungary voted: "Hungary: get out and vote for Viktor Orbán. He is a true friend, fighter, and winner, and has my Complete and Total Endorsement." Péter Magyar's Tisza party won and Orbán conceded on election night.
Trump gave his "complete and total endorsement" in June 2026 to Abelardo de la Espriella, the right-wing candidate in Colombia's presidential election, who won, Time reported. House Democrats wrote to Rubio accusing senior US officials of "brazen interference" in Colombia's vote.
Trump wrote "FREE MARINE LE PEN!" on 3 April 2025 after a Paris court convicted the French far-right leader of embezzling European Parliament funds and barred her from standing for office.
The State Department signed off US$176.9 million from its Human Rights and Democracy Fund to 43 awards on 30 September 2026, hours before the money lapsed, The Guardian reported. Alongside the Brazil grant, the slate includes US$2 million for "Promoting Western Civilization Allies" in Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and the Balkans, open only to groups that do not subscribe to "ideologically weaponized accounts of human rights, such as gender ideology". "The Trump administration's proposals would use taxpayer funds to promote far-right organizations and programs in established democracies," Senator Jeanne Shaheen said.
Russian interference
Abin officials told French and German officials in Brasília between 9 and 11 September that they had "confirmed the existence of interference from the United States as well as Russia", according to a meeting report reviewed by Reuters. The French side included Viginum, the government agency that tracks Russian information operations in Europe. A senior Brazilian cyber official at the same meetings said cyberattacks on Brazil had nearly doubled compared with 2025, with rises in hacking and phishing aimed at the president's office that were "clearly election-related".
Nova Resistência, a Brazilian group founded in 2015 by Raphael Machado and built on the ideas of the Russian nationalist philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, published a fabricated story in January 2026 claiming that German Chancellor Friedrich Merz would pay for a €1.4 billion football stadium in Belém, Germany's public broadcaster ARD reported through its Tagesschau news portal. Tagesschau linked Machado to Storm-1516, a Russian disinformation network that builds fake news sites imitating established media and spreads them through paid influencers. Machado passed false stories to the Swiss influencer Daniel Gugger for distribution on X and wrote for the Strategic Culture Foundation, a Russian-linked website, according to the report, which Band and IstoÉ republished in Brazil on 2 September. Machado has also been identified as part of Russian disinformation networks by the US State Department and by Viginum, Band reported.
The State Department's Global Engagement Center concluded in 2023 that Nova Resistência "is a creation of the Russian government to promulgate disinformation in Brazil" and linked it to Dugin's Eurasianist movement. The group hosted a Global Conference on Multipolarity in 2023 with Dugin and Russian officials including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, and has tried to place members inside Brazil's Democratic Labour Party (PDT).
The State Department said on 7 November 2023 that three Russian organisations, the Social Design Agency, Structura and the Institute for Internet Development, ran a campaign to plant Kremlin content in Latin American media, with Russian teams writing articles that local editors "localised" and Spanish and Portuguese translators publishing under aliases. The campaign aimed to "undermine support for Ukraine and propagate anti-U.S. and anti-NATO sentiment", the department said. Ilya Gambashidze, director of the Social Design Agency, was among those named.
Russian intelligence used Brazil for years to build false identities for deep-cover officers, a New York Times investigation published in May 2025 found. Brazil's Federal Police, acting on a CIA tip in 2022, exposed nine Russian "illegals" who had obtained genuine Brazilian birth certificates and passports. Sergey Cherkasov, who lived in Brazil as "Victor Muller Ferreira", won an internship at the International Criminal Court as it began investigating Russian war crimes in Ukraine, and is in prison in Brasília. Artem Shmyrev ran a 3D printing business in Rio de Janeiro as "Gerhard Daniel Campos Wittich" before disappearing.
Russia supplied 8.1 billion of the 17.3 billion litres of diesel Brazil imported in 2025, according to StoneX data reported by Hydrocarbon Processing, and 28.2 per cent of Brazil's fertiliser imports from January to July 2025, according to Brazil's trade ministry. Vladimir Putin told Folha de S.Paulo in October 2022, during the last runoff, that Brazil was Russia's "most important partner in the region", that he had good relations with both Lula and Jair Bolsonaro and that Russia would stay out of Brazil's politics. Bolsonaro visited Putin in Moscow in February 2022, days before the invasion of Ukraine. Moscow has denied interfering in other countries' elections.
The Workers' Party asked the Supreme Federal Court and the Superior Electoral Court on 23 September to investigate foreign interference in the election.
The vote
About 158.8 million Brazilians are eligible to vote on 4 October for president, governors, senators and federal and state deputies. The Federal Court of Accounts will monitor integrity tests of the electronic voting machines in all 27 states, the Superior Electoral Court said.
Datafolha's poll of 2,506 voters from 29 September to 1 October gave Lula 45 per cent of valid votes and Flávio Bolsonaro 40 per cent, with a margin of error of two points. In a runoff Lula had 48 per cent and Flávio Bolsonaro 45 per cent. AtlasIntel's online poll of 5,000 people from 27 September to 2 October gave Lula 45.9 per cent and Flávio Bolsonaro 42.2 per cent in the first round and put them at 47.6 per cent and 47.7 per cent in a runoff, according to CartaCapital. Datafolha and Quaest are due to publish final polls on the evening of 3 October.
A candidate needs more than half the valid votes to win on Sunday. Otherwise the top two meet in a runoff on 25 October.
Lula's campaign aims to enter a runoff with a lead of five to seven points over Flávio Bolsonaro, enough in its view to discourage the Trump administration from mobilising behind the right before 25 October, CNN Brasil columnist Clarissa Oliveira reported on 2 October. The campaign fears covert US interference between the two rounds, she reported.
Brazilians vote on Sunday in their 10th direct presidential election since the military handed back power in 1985, 62 years after the US sent warships towards their coast to back the coup that took it away. On the eve of the vote every US consulate in the country is closed, Jair Bolsonaro is serving his 27-year sentence for plotting to overturn the last election under house arrest, three US senators have asked Rubio to commit to recognising the result and Prosecutor General Paulo Gonet holds the Attorney General's request for a criminal inquiry into the State Department's US$1 million programme against the Supreme Court.
