This news article appeared today in Brazil’s largest newspaper, Folha de S.Paulo, in Portuguese; the translated article in English appears below.
The media company of U.S. President Donald Trump, along with the American video platform Rumble, filed a joint lawsuit in a U.S. federal court today against the notorious Brazilian Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes. The platforms seek a judicial declaration that Moraes’ recent orders — which mandate that Rumble close the account of right-wing commentator Allan dos Santos and turn over all of his user data — violates the sovereignty of the United States, the U.S. Constitution, and American law. Moraes issued the orders in secret, and required Rumble not to disclose the contents of the order.
Rumble left Brazil in December, 2023, due to what it described as numerous unjust “censorship orders” from Moraes to ban multiple creators and voices on the platform, including elected members of Congress. At the time, Moraes ordered Rumble to keep those orders secret, and threatened the company with being shut off in Brazil if it failed to immediately comply: similar to how, last August, Moraes ordered X closed in Brazil for failure to comply with orders banning users and removing posts.
We obtained and published a copy of one such secret order — directed to multiple platforms — in January, 2023. They gave the platforms two hours to comply or face substantial daily fines. Rumble shut off its service in Brazil rather than comply.
But with a new Trump administration vowing to protect American technology companies from censorship demands by foreign governments, and with Moraes recently withdrawing an order blocking the Rumble account of the podcaster Monark, Rumble made its content once again available in Brazil earlier this month. Almost immediately, Moraes sent orders to Rumble’s former lawyers in the country, directing them to once again represent Rumble so that they could receive his orders on the company’s behalf.
Moraes’ new order at the center of the lawsuit is one that directed Rumble to fully close the account of dos Santos and prevent him from opening any new ones. Unlike prior orders from Moraes, this one does not merely force the platform to block dos Santos’ content from being available in Brazil.
The order requires that Rumble ban dos Santos entirely from using or monetizing Rumble in any way, including outside of Brazil. As prior orders did, it gave Rumble only two hours to comply.
Dos Santos was charged in Brazil with several crimes relating to the alleged disinformation he posted about the STF and 2022 election. But in April of last year, the Biden administration rejected Brazil’s extradition request on the ground that such acts are not and cannot be considered crimes in the U.S., as they are protected by the right to free expression.
Under extradition treaties, countries generally refuse to extradite a foreign national if the acts that form the basis of the request are not crimes in that country. Dos Santos’ application for political asylum in the U.S. is pending, and he remains a legal resident of the U.S.
Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski said in a statement that the American rejection of that extradition request should have put an end to Moraes’ attempt to limit dos Santos’ speech in the U.S. Instead, he said, “[Moraes] is now attempting to sidestep the U.S. legal system entirely — using secret censorship orders to pressure American social media into banning the political dissident worldwide.”
Rumble’s lawyer E. Martin De Luca, of the large law firm Boies Schiller, said that, as a legal resident of the U.S., Dos Santos’ “speech is fully protected under the First Amendment.” The purpose of the suit, he said, is “to ensure that American businesses remain governed by American law and that no foreign court can unilaterally dictate what speech is allowed on American platforms without proper authorization from the U.S. government.”
It has become a top goal of American technology companies to enlist the Trump administration in their fight against political censorship imposed by foreign governments. When Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in January that Facebook’s “fact-checking program” would end, he asked the U.S. Government to protect tech companies against foreign governments who are “going after American companies and pushing to censor more.” When asked about Meta’s announcement, Trump expressed approval for it.
Lawyers for Trump’s media company argue that any attempt to disrupt Rumble’s operations in Brazil would also harm Trump’s company, Trump Media and Technology Group Corp. (Trump Media), and its Truth Social media platform. Rumble provides Truth Social with the cloud services on which the site depends. Any blocking of Rumble, Trump Media argues, will destabilize Truth Social as well, giving the company a legal basis to challenge Moraes’ orders directed at Rumble.
The political consequences of this new lawsuit could be at least as significant as its legal implications, perhaps more so. Many key figures in Trump’s new government have long harbored animosity toward Moraes and toward what they see as Brazil’s increasingly repressive censorship regime. Focusing a light on Moraes and depicting his orders as an attack on American sovereignty, American companies and the free speech rights of U.S. residents is likely to inflame tensions among Moraes’ now-powerful American opponents.
Chief among those is Elon Musk, the person arguably most powerful in the new American government. During X’s battle with the STF, Musk launched multiple harsh rhetorical attacks on Moraes, calling him “a tyrannical dictator masquerading as a judge” and a “criminal.” In August, Musk published an AI-generated photo of Moraes behind prison bars and wrote: “One day, @Alexandre, this picture of you in prison will be real. Mark my words.”
The decision by Trump’s media company to join Rumble’s lawsuit against Moraes undoubtedly signals the new administration’s intent to combat many of the Brazilian judge’s censorship orders. Thus far, the Trump administration has largely avoided specifically targeting Brazil with the kinds of retaliatory tariffs, demands and punishments imposed on other countries. But this lawsuit against Moraes from Trump’s media company can, and almost certainly will, inflame these latent conflicts between the two governments.
In addition to seeking a ruling that Moraes’ order violates American sovereignty and law, the lawsuit also requests an order be issued to Apple and Google, requiring them not to abide by any directives from Moraes to remove Truth Social or Rumble’s platform from their stores. It also requests a jury trial to determine the validity of the companies’ claims against Moraes.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald has a contract with Rumble to provide exclusivity for his online show for 12 hours; Rumble has no editorial control (or any other control) over the show or Greenwald’s journalism.
