Brazil’s Foreign Ministry denied visas on 24 July to Riley M. Barnes, Assistant Secretary, and Samuel Samson, Deputy Assistant Secretary, both of the US State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. The requests had been lodged on 20 July, with the officials stating they intended to meet Brazilian electoral authorities to discuss freedom of expression related to the October presidential election. The ministry confirmed the refusal on 25 July, describing the mission as unusual and warning of a “risk of political instrumentalisation”.

Viewed from Brasília, the timing of the visa request was decisive. On 21 July, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro — the right-wing pre-candidate and son of former President Jair Bolsonaro — told a gathering of foreign diplomats in Brasília, without evidence, that Brazil’s electronic voting machines were manufactured by the Venezuelan company Smartmatic. The Superior Electoral Court (TSE) immediately rebutted the claim, stating that Smartmatic had never supplied hardware or software to the Brazilian electoral system. Brazilian diplomatic sources told The Washington Post that the proximity of the visa request to that event reinforced suspicions that the US mission was designed to lend credibility to domestic attacks on the voting system. One senior Brazilian diplomat described the planned visit as “a manoeuvre completely incompatible with Brazilian democracy”.

According to a report in The Washington Post, the Trump administration intended the envoys to meet critics of the electronic ballot and produce a report that could be used to cast doubt on the integrity of the vote. The State Department confirmed that Barnes and Samson were scheduled to travel to Brasília the following week but declined to answer questions about the purpose of the trip. Anonymous US officials quoted by the same newspaper called the mission “extremely harmful”, with one saying it was “using American power to undermine reliable elections in other nations for ideological reasons”.

The TSE disclosed that the US embassy had contacted its international office about a visit but did not inform the court of the agenda; no meeting was scheduled because of the judicial recess. The court’s president, Justice Kássio Nunes Marques, had already briefed 25 ambassadors on the electronic voting system in June and will host a further meeting on 17 August, to which US diplomats will be invited. The visa denial adds to a series of bilateral frictions, including US tariffs on Brazilian goods and the recent revocation of a visa for another Trump adviser, Darren Beattie. The presidential election is set for 4 October, with incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva leading Flávio Bolsonaro in opinion polls.