Alexandre de Moraes is a justice on Brazil's Supreme Court. He led the prosecution of former president Jair Bolsonaro for plotting a coup, and an investigation into online disinformation. On September 11th 2025 the court voted to convict Mr Bolsonaro; as he cast his vote Mr Moraes said "Brazil almost returned to a dictatorship" because Mr Bolsonaro "doesn't know how to lose elections". He is a devotee of Muay Thai, a combat sport.
In December 2022 members of Bolsonaro's inner circle hatched a plot codenamed "Operation Green and Yellow Dagger" to assassinate Mr Moraes, Lula da Silva and the incoming vice-president, Geraldo Alckmin. Elite soldiers from the army's special-forces unit—known as kids pretos ("black kids") for their dark balaclavas—surveilled Mr Moraes. On the evening of December 15th 2022 the hitmen took up positions around Mr Moraes's house and the route from the Supreme Court, communicating via Signal under the codenames of football teams. The operation was aborted at 8:57pm when the court postponed its session and the assassins lost track of Mr Moraes's movements. According to police, the plot collapsed not only because of the missed opportunity but because the heads of the army and air force refused to back Mr Bolsonaro's broader coup plan.
On July 18th 2025 Mr Moraes ordered Mr Bolsonaro to wear an electronic ankle monitor, confined him to house arrest during nights and weekends, and barred him from speaking to foreign officials or giving interviews. On July 19th he froze the assets of Eduardo Bolsonaro, a congressman and Jair's son, as part of an investigation into whether Eduardo's lobbying of American officials constitutes obstruction of the case against his father.
In late 2025 Trump lifted the sanctions on Mr Moraes, as relations between the United States and Brazil thawed. The Trump administration had earlier extended sanctions to Mr Moraes's wife. On July 30th 2025 it had placed sanctions on Mr Moraes himself under the Global Magnitsky Act, freezing his assets in American banks and prohibiting him from entering the United States. Marco Rubio, America's secretary of state, posted that it should "be a warning to those who would trample on the fundamental rights of their countrymen." Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary, claimed Mr Moraes was carrying out "an unlawful witch-hunt against US and Brazilian citizens and companies". The Magnitsky Act has previously been used against genocidal Burmese generals and Russian officials who murdered political dissidents; targeting a sitting judge in a functioning democracy is unprecedented. Days earlier, the State Department had revoked the visas of most justices on Brazil's Supreme Court.
In 2019 Brazil's Supreme Court opened what became known as "the fake-news inquiry" to investigate misinformation on social media affecting "the honour and security of the Supreme Court and its members". Mr Moraes was appointed to lead the probe, bypassing the usual lottery system. It was meant to last less than a year; instead it continues six years later and its remit has expanded to include online disinformation about democratic institutions. Because the probe is sealed, it is unclear how many social-media accounts Mr Moraes has ordered removed, or why. In April 2024 the judiciary committee of the US Congress published a report showing he had ordered X to remove at least 88 accounts since 2019, usually without providing justification.
When evidence emerged of his wife's lucrative contract with Banco Master, Mr Moraes opened an investigation into tax officials for leaking confidential information. On February 17th 2026 federal police raided the homes of four suspect officials. Mr Moraes ordered ankle monitors, cancelled their passports and banned them from travelling or entering the premises of the tax authorities. The use of the fake-news inquiry to pursue officials who leaked embarrassing information about a justice's family drew widespread criticism. "Combating leaks and the sale of confidential data is important," said Alessandro Vieira, a centre-right senator, "but it should not serve as a smokescreen to conceal unjustified assets or crimes committed by important figures of the republic."
It was not the first time the inquiry's remit had expanded beyond online disinformation. In 2019 Mr Moraes used it to kill an investigation by the tax authorities into a number of officials, including STF judges. That same year he used it to order the scrubbing of a Crusoé article reporting links between Dias Toffoli and the boss of Odebrecht; only public outcry forced him to reverse course.
Mr Moraes's wife runs a law firm together with the couple's son and daughter. Before Mr Moraes was appointed to the court in 2017, her firm had 27 cases before the STF and the Superior Court of Justice (STJ). By early 2026 it had 152. In 2023 the court declared "unconstitutional" a law that had forbidden justices from ruling in cases involving businesses or individuals linked to firms run by their relatives.
In early 2026, when investigators opened the phone of Daniel Vorcaro, the head of Banco Master, a mid-sized bank that collapsed, they found the bank had signed a deal worth $24m over three years with a law firm run by Mr Moraes's wife. The vagueness of the contract and large sums involved were described as "not normal" by Brazilian standards. The attorney-general shut down an investigation into the couple, citing insufficient evidence of misconduct. Mr Moraes and his wife denied wrongdoing.
Brazil's constitution, one of the world's longest, allows the president, state governors, the bar association, trade unions and political parties to file lawsuits directly with the Supreme Court. The court's 11 justices issued over 114,000 rulings in the most recent year. To deal with this caseload, individual judges are allowed to make far-reaching decisions, giving Mr Moraes and his colleagues enormous power.
... Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror, and you would not have been informed.