By Gram Slattery
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. government is revoking the visas of Brazilian Solicitor-General Jorge Messias and five other former and current Brazilian judicial officials, a senior Trump administration official told Reuters on Monday.
The move represents a significant escalation in the ongoing feud between the U.S. and Brazilian governments that has intensified since the criminal conviction of former President Jair Bolsonaro earlier in the month.
U.S. President Donald Trump and his political allies have denounced Bolsonaro’s conviction as the fruit of a political witch-hunt and more broadly accused Brazil’s judiciary of censoring conservatives.
Brazilian authorities have vigorously rejected those assertions. They say there is ample evidence that the right-wing former leader – a close ally of Trump – attempted to overturn his 2022 election loss to current President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
In addition to Jorge Messias, the official said the Trump administration is revoking the visas of former Solicitor-General Jose Levi, former electoral court justice Benedito Goncalves, auxiliary judge and Supreme Court aide Airton Vieira, former electoral court aide Marco Antonio Martin Vargas and Rafael Henrique Janela Tamai Rocha, another high-ranking judicial aide.
It was not possible to immediately reach those figures for comment.
Several of them are current or former aides or allies to Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who presided over the recent trial of Bolsonaro, and has received the brunt of the Trump administration’s ire.
In July, Moraes was sanctioned by the Trump administration. He has had his visa revoked, along with several other Brazilian Supreme Court justices. The U.S. Treasury has also sanctioned Moraes’ wife.
(Reporting by Gram Slattery, Editing by Don Durfee and Rosalba O’Brien)
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