Brazilian judge Moraes tests patience of Trump, Bolsonaro and fellow justices

As Moraes pushes forward with Bolsonaro’s coup trial, U.S. sanctions and rising domestic criticism reveal a growing tension over whether his uncompromising approach is strengthening democracy or straining trust in Brazil’s judiciary.

Brasilia: Brazil's Supreme Court goes into final deliberations in its trial of former President Jair Bolsonaro this week in a case that has incurred the wrath of U.S. President Donald Trump.

No man has felt the force of that fury, or dismissed it as scornfully, as Alexandre de Moraes, the judge who put Bolsonaro under house arrest, jailed hundreds of his backers for invading government buildings and cowed Elon Musk over social media content. His pursuit of Bolsonaro has led Trump to impose a 50% trade tariff on Brazil, visa restrictions and individual financial sanctions.

Moraes, 56, whose stern bald visage has come to define the court he joined eight years ago, insists he won't back down. But behind his implacable facade, he faces a growing backlash from lawmakers seeking his impeachment and public opinion tiring of his hardline tactics.

Even within the high court, which has upheld his decisions and presented a largely united front, tensions are rising. Two court sources said his fellow justices worry the Bolsonaro case may draw even stronger blowback from Trump, who has demanded that Brazil drop the trial that the U.S. president calls a "witch hunt."

Some Supreme Court justices are preparing to publicly question elements of decisions by Moraes, who is running the case, to show their independence, the court sources said.

Moraes told Reuters in an interview in August that he had not heard any concerns from peers about how he has run the Bolsonaro case.

"If anyone did complain, they complained to the press," he said. "Whoever put this in the press, I'll say here that it's a lie."

In July, the U.S. government stripped visas from eight high court justices, sparing three judges who had clearly diverged with Moraes in prior cases. That has fed speculation among the local press that the Trump administration is trying to sow division on the court.

In response to questions from Reuters, a senior U.S. State Department official did not address that speculation but said the visa restrictions targeted Moraes.

President Trump "has taken decisive action through the imposition of Global Magnitsky Sanctions against Justice Moraes and his allies," the official said, referring to a law that allows the U.S. to impose economic penalties against foreigners it considers to have a record of corruption or human rights abuses.

Supreme Court Justice Andre Mendonca, whom Bolsonaro appointed in 2021, has hinted increasingly in public about divergences on the court.

"A good judge must be respected, not feared," he said in a recent speech, which some in the court took as thinly veiled criticism of Moraes, who would address the same event in Rio de Janeiro later in the day. "Their rulings should bring social peace, not chaos, uncertainty, or insecurity."

Mendonca did not respond to a Reuters request for comment. Bolsonaro is still widely expected to be convicted of plotting a coup to overturn the 2022 election, which he lost to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and sentenced to prison by the five-judge panel convened from Tuesday through next week. Bolsonaro has denied any wrongdoing and called Moraes a "dictator."

Fragile democracy

Alexandre de Moraes was born on December 13th, 1968, at one of the darkest moments of Brazil's recent history.

That was the day the military dictatorship then ruling the country gave itself the power to close Congress and suspend political rights, unleashing an era of repression that included the torture of thousands and killing of hundreds of Brazilians.

Moraes and his supporters say his aggressive approach to Bolsonaro and his allies has always been aimed at defending Brazilian democracy and avoiding a repeat of that dark day. His critics argue the opposite, accusing him of censorship and illegal overreach in orders to remove social media posts from Bolsonaro supporters, seize the phones of businessmen discussing the virtues of a coup and jail a lawmaker who made threats against the court.

The senior State Department official said, “Brazil’s dark reality is a stark reminder of where political weaponization of a government, such as the one conducted under the Biden administration, ultimately leads.”

Trump has accused Democratic former President Joe Biden of "weaponizing" the U.S. legal system and has accused him and former President Barack Obama, without providing evidence, of an effort to falsely tie him to Russia and undermine Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. Still, if the Supreme Court convicts Bolsonaro, a former army captain, and generals who allegedly plotted with him, it would be the first time in Brazil's coup-spotted history that military officers are punished for threatening democracy.

"The history of Brazil and the world teaches that impunity, omissions and cowardice can, at first, look like the fastest way to solve problems," Moraes told the audience in Rio. "Impunity never worked in history for any country in the world."

Many Brazilians are ready to see Bolsonaro punished. In an August survey by pollster Quaest, 55% of respondents said his house arrest was justified.

Brazil's conservative business elite has also cheered the idea of Sao Paulo Governor Tarcisio Freitas, who served in Bolsonaro's cabinet, running for president next year as a more moderate standard-bearer of his right-wing coalition.

However, those hopes have not translated into widespread approval for Moraes, whose scorched-earth jurisprudence is wearing thin with many Brazilians. Quaest found in August that 46% of Brazilians want him impeached.

Bolsonaro's allies say they have lined up more than 41 senators eager to remove Moraes from office, still shy of the 54 needed for impeachment.

Senate President Davi Alcolumbre has refused to allow a vote on the matter, which is likely to become a battle cry among right-wing parties looking to add Senate seats in the 2026 general election.

Steel in adversity

Moraes was starting a vacation in Paris in January 2023 when hundreds of Bolsonaro's supporters rioted in Brasilia, rampaging through government buildings in an attempt to trigger a military intervention that could reverse the electoral results.

The judge's longtime friend Floriano Azevedo, a member of Brazil's electoral court, recalls his astonishment when Moraes told him he was getting on the next plane back to Brazil.

"There is a rebellion of those proportions, of which he was a target, and he decided to go back to the epicenter of the thing," he said.

Azevedo said adversity only steels Moraes. "Sometimes people assume others will behave the way they do," Moraes told Reuters in the August interview from his office in Brasilia. "So maybe they would back down like cowards if they were threatened. Obviously, the Supreme Court would never cower in the face of threats."

His resolve has earned him a measure of deference in recent years, when many on the high court worried the institution was under threat. But that tough resolve may now be backfiring.

"He is polite and kind," said former Justice Marco Aurelio Mello, who served on the court with Moraes for four years. "But I wouldn't want to be tried by him."