U.S. President Donald Trump’s Trump Media & Technology Group (DJT.O), and video-sharing platform Rumble sued a Brazilian Supreme Court justice over accusations of illegal censorship on Wednesday.
The case comes as the judge, Alexandre de Moraes, weighs charges brought on Tuesday alleging former President Jair Bolsonaro led a plot to overthrow Brazil’s government and undermine the country’s democracy after his 2022 election loss.
Trump Media’s lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Tampa, alleged that the judge’s previous orders “censor legitimate political discourse in the United States.”Rumble in a statement said the lawsuit alleged that Moraes “violated the free speech protections of the First Amendment when he ordered the suspension of the U.S.-based accounts of a specific well-known, politically outspoken user.”
It did not name the person.
In recent years, Moraes has issued many rulings blocking social media accounts as he spearheaded a crusade against perceived attacks on democracy and the political use of disinformation in Brazil.
Brazil’s Supreme Court and Moraes’ office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Republican U.S. president is a majority owner of Trump Media, which runs his private social media platform Truth Social, although the Trump Organization has said he would hand over daily management of his various businesses to his children while serving in the White House.
Trump’s vice president, JD Vance, a former venture capitalist and former U.S. senator, had previously invested in Florida-based Rumble in 2021, the same year Trump joined the platform.
Rumble in 2023 disabled access for users in Brazil citing court orders to “remove certain creators,” which it vowed to challenge.
Reuters