Brazil has denied visas to two senior US State Department officials who planned to travel to Brasilia this week to discuss “election integrity,” accusing the Trump administration of seeking to interfere in Brazil’s October presidential election.
Assistant Secretary Riley M. Barnes, from the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, and Deputy Assistant Secretary Samuel Samson requested visas on July 20 and were rejected on Friday, a spokesperson for Brazil’s Foreign Ministry said. Their planned visit ran from July 27 to 30.
Brazilian officials told the Washington Post that they had learned of a US “ploy” that was “completely incompatible with Brazilian democracy.” The visa denial was based on “evidence pointing to a renewed attempt to politically exploit the situation and undermine the electoral system,” a Brazilian official told Reuters.
The State Department pushed back, calling the visit routine and denying any hidden agenda. The department said the envoys planned to discuss election integrity, religious freedom, and freedom of expression with government officials and religious leaders, and described “any insinuation of a ‘ploy’ to undermine a democratic nation’s election is a baseless lie.”
The diplomatic clash comes as Brazil heads into a polarized presidential election on October 4. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is seeking reelection against Flavio Bolsonaro, son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is serving a 27-year sentence under house arrest for plotting a coup after losing to Lula in 2022.
The specter of the older Bolsonaro hangs over the entire race. Jair, a close ally of Trump who was dubbed the “Trump of the Tropics” during his own presidency, spent years making unsubstantiated allegations that Brazil’s electronic voting system was vulnerable to fraud — the same playbook Trump himself employed after losing the 2020 US election. Flavio has repeated some of those claims on the campaign trail.
The Trump administration has classified two of Brazil’s largest drug-trafficking groups as foreign terrorist organizations, a move Lula opposes. Trump has also railed against Jair Bolsonaro’s prosecution, calling it a “witch hunt.” And in May, Flavio and his brother Eduardo visited Trump in Washington. The ties between the Bolsonaro family and Trump’s circle are open and well-documented.
Against that backdrop, the arrival of US officials discussing “election integrity” weeks before a vote in which a Trump-aligned candidate is challenging a leftist incumbent looks very different in Brasilia than it does in Washington. Brazil made its position clear: the visas were denied, and the US delegation will not be coming.