A Republican-led congressional committee published a series of Brazilian court documents on Wednesday, exposing previously classified details of Brazilian Superior Electoral Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes’ legal campaign against X and platform owner Elon Musk. According to a staff report from the House Judiciary Committee, de Moraes has ordered the suspension of more than 150 politically dissident X users in Brazil, possibly interfering with the county’s last election and raising concerns about similar policies in the United States.
The 541-page report detailing the extent of Brazil’s censorship effort stems from a subpoena directed at X in connection with the Judiciary Committee’s probe into the Weaponization of the Federal Government under the Biden administration. As part of that inquiry, the Committee is examining other countries’ methods for censoring online speech. In a letter to ranking members of the US State Department, Committee members stated:
The Committee and Select Subcommittee have learned from documents obtained pursuant to subpoena that the Superior Electoral Court in Brazil and the Supreme Federal Court have ordered X to suspend or remove over 100 accounts on the popular social media platform since 2022. These censorship demands were targeted towards critics of the Brazilian government and include former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, conservative members of the federal legislature, journalists, members of the judiciary, and even a gospel singer and a pop radio station.
The Brazilian court justified the censorship on the basis that “it is necessary, appropriate, and urgent tom stop the possible spread of hate speech, subversion of order, and encouragement to break institutional and democratic normality by blocking accounts on social networks.”
We’ve got questions for the Biden administration: https://t.co/9PHhxIWiJz pic.twitter.com/nGG0g0shZb
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As Valuetainment previously reported, de Moraes initiated a formal investigation into Musk and X Corp. earlier this month after Musk refused to comply with his demands. Musk remained adamant that he would not comply with the court order, stating that “principles matter more than profit.” However, he also revealed that Brazilian X employees had been threatened with arrest, forcing him to proceed with caution. De Moraes then issued a further indictment against Musk for obstruction of justice and incitement to crime.
At the time, Musk promised to find a way to release classified records of the proceedings for the world to see—and according to legal analysts, X’s cooperation with the Judiciary Committee was an innovative way of doing just that.
Related: Brazil Court Majority Bans Bolsonaro from Running for Office for Eight Years
In a summary statement, the Committee concluded by warning that “government-directed censorship is not a problem isolated only to authoritarian governments in faraway lands; it is happening here in the United States.”
“The Committee’s and Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government’s findings of the Biden Administration’s attacks on free speech reveal how the Biden Administration, like Brazil, has sought to silence their critics,” the statement said. “The State Department has an Office of the Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights to ‘advance the security of the American people by assisting countries around the world to build more democratic, secure, stable, and just societies.’ Under the Biden Administration, the Department has been noticeably silent as Brazil and other countries have sought to censor speech online.”
In recent years, de Moraes Moraes intervened to a significant extent in the 2020 election, banning right-wing users from social media who denied the election outcome and arresting security officials he blamed for negligence during the storming of the Brazilian capitol building. He is also responsible for the ongoing criminal prosecution of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is being targeted in multiple investigations.
The full report from the House Judiciary Committee can be read below:
2024-04-17-The-Attack-on-Free-Speech-Abroad-and-the-Biden-Administrations-Silence-The-Case-of-BrazilDownload
Connor Walcott is a staff writer for Valuetainment.com. Follow Connor on X and look for him on VT’s “The Unusual Suspects.”
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