The State Department lashed out at Brazil Saturday after the country denied visas to two senior Trump administration officials over fears of a ploy to undermine its upcoming presidential election, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Brazil's October 4 election pits incumbent leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva against far-right lawmaker Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is currently serving a 27-year prison sentence for plotting a coup after losing to da Silva in 2022. Flávio has met with Trump at the White House and is widely seen as Washington's preferred candidate, while Trump has already slapped tariffs on Brazil and sanctioned Supreme Court justices over the elder Bolsonaro's prosecution.
“Brazil’s Foreign Ministry said Saturday it had denied visas for Riley M. Barnes, assistant secretary from the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, and Samuel Samson, a deputy assistant secretary of state,” the Journal’s report reads.
“Brazil’s government believes [a] planned delegation is part of a concerted effort by Jair Bolsonaro’s sons – including his son Eduardo, who lives in the U.S. – to discredit the elections in case Flávio Bolsonaro loses in October, said people close to da Silva.”
The U.S. State Department confirmed to the Journal that Barnes and Samson were scheduled to visit Brazil next week for meetings about election integrity, among other things, but dismissed claims that such meetings were designed to undermine Brazilian elections.
“Any insinuation of a ‘ploy’ to undermine a democratic nation’s election is a baseless lie,” the State Department said in a statement, per the Journal.
Flávio Bolsonaro recently sparked fears among Brazilian officials after making election integrity claims strikingly similar to those promoted by President Donald Trump and his administration.
“Brazilian officials said alarm bells went off in the capital of Brasília earlier this week when Flávio Bolsonaro told diplomats that the country’s electronic-voting machines were produced by the Venezuelan company Smartmatic, insinuating they were vulnerable to fraud,” the Journal’s report reads.
“Brazil’s election court has rejected those claims, saying that Smartmatic has never supplied voting machines used in Brazilian elections and that international observers have consistently found the country’s system to be secure.”