- Trump Media and the right-wing video platform Rumble jointly sued Brazilian Justice Alexandre de Moraes, alleging his previous order to remove certain accounts did not apply to them, because they are American companies.
The Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG) is suing the Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who is set to hear a criminal case for former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday.
Moraes is already embroiled in a series of legal proceedings involving right-wing allies of President Donald Trump, who is also the majority shareholder of TMTG.
Just hours before the suit was filed, Moraes received an indictment for Bolsonaro, who was charged with plotting a coup to overthrow the government after his 2022 election loss. Last year, Moraes clashed with Elon Musk, a major Trump campaign donor and current advisor, when he blocked the social media company X from operating in Brazil because it had not named a legal representative in the country.
Last month, when Bolsonaro was under investigation but not yet indicted, he pleaded with Trump to intervene in his legal problems, according to a New York Times interview. Now it appears Trump has answered that call, albeit in a circuitous way.
In Wednesday’s lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Florida, TMTG is joined by Rumble, an online video platform that mostly caters to right-wing and conservative users. The suit alleges Moraes is infringing on the free speech of U.S. users by requiring that Rumble ban the accounts of prominent Bolsonaro supporters. Those users do not have accounts on TMTG’s Truth Social platform. However, TMTG does use Rumble’s cloud-based hosting to deliver video content on its platforms. TMTG’s filing argued that if Rumble’s business were hurt by Moraes’s gag order, it could adversely affect TMTG as well.
TMTG and Rumble claim that they should not have to comply with Moraes’s order, because they have no business in Brazil and his jurisdiction does not extend to the U.S.
“Allowing Justice Moraes to muzzle a vocal user on an American digital outlet would jeopardize our country’s bedrock commitment to open and robust debate,” the lawsuit reads. “Neither extraterritorial dictates nor judicial overreach from abroad can override the freedoms protected by the U.S. Constitution and law.”
The lawsuit embodies much of the unprecedented nature of current American and global politics. A company whose majority shareholder is the sitting president of the United States is suing a foreign judge who is considering whether to arrest a key political figure in the worldwide right-wing movement.
TMTG denied the connection in a statement to Fortune, calling it a “ridiculous theory” that was “copied” from the New York Times.
“The only people who’d draw a connection between Bolsonaro and our attempt to quash gag orders on a Rumble user are conspiracy theorists and mindless legacy media hacks,” TMTG said.
Moraes in the past has claimed that it is necessary to ban Bolsonaro’s supporters from disseminating their content online because they promote antidemocratic messages that would harm the public. On Tuesday the Brazilian attorney general charged Bolsonaro with being part of a sweeping coup attempt after he lost his bid for reelection in 2022. The vast plot Bolsonaro was allegedly a part of included canceling votes, strengthening military rule, and doing away with parts of the judicial system. Most shockingly the indictment also alleges that Bolsonaro knew of, and perhaps was involved in, a plan to kill his political opponents. The indictment alleges Bolsonaro was part of schemes to poison the election’s eventual winner, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and another to shoot Moraes. (In an interview with the New York Times Bolsonaro denied any involvement with the plots against da Silva and Moraes.)
Rumble and Moraes did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fortune.
