Martin de Luca, President Donald Trump’s lawyer, said in an interview with the program Sem Rodeios, on People’s Gazettethis Tuesday (3), that the Minister of the Federal Supreme Court (STF) Alexandre de Moraes tries to shield himself from the lawsuit filed by the companies he represents, Rumble and Trump Media, in the US Federal Court, using the Brazilian State as a shield.
The representative of the American companies requested this Monday, through a court request in Florida, that Moraes be summoned via an alternative route, after “blocking” other means of contact for his summons in the lawsuit.
De Luca highlighted that this constitutes a new phase of the process and that the purpose of the new demand is precisely to advance the action in American territory. Rumble and Trump Media seek the conviction of Minister Alexandre de Moraes in the US for issuing secret extraterritorial censorship orders.
“From our perspective, what is happening is a shielding of the minister using State tools,” he said, adding that his team carried out all the required procedures and sought all official channels to subpoena Moraes, but Brazil would not have completed the steps it was responsible for.
Could Moraes be punished again under the Magnitsky Act?
De Luca believes that Moraes could be included again on the US sanctioned list. According to him, it would not be the first time that the country returns names to the sanctions lists.
The lawyer cited the case of Venezuela. In Trump’s first term, former dictator Nicolás Maduro and allies were sanctioned by Washington due to political tensions with the Americans. De Luca mentions that the Republican’s successor, Joe Biden, removed some of these sanctions after Maduro accepted US demands.
Comparing to Magnitsky, Trump’s representative says that the reasons that led the American government to sanction Moraes have not changed. “This will depend solely on the US government, but there are precedents for this to happen”, he pointed out.
The US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (Ofac) removed the names of minister Alexandre de Moraes, the Lex Institute of Legal Studies and Viviane Barci de Moraes, the judge’s wife and director of the institute, from the Donald Trump government’s list of economic sanctions targets via the Magnitsky Act in December.
