Vice President JD Vance has been pulled into a Brazilian police investigation of whether a donor network he co-founded illegally aided Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro’s losing presidential bid.
Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Flávio Dino ordered the investigation Tuesday in a 38-page decision, two days after Bolsonaro lost a runoff election to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
The order focuses on the Rockbridge Network, a donor group Vance co-founded in 2019, The Washington Post reported. Vance spoke at the network’s donor gatherings as recently as a year ago, and his office declined to comment Tuesday.
Dino’s order lists five questions for federal police, and two of them name Rockbridge directly.
The order says police must examine talks between Rockbridge representatives and Brazilian businessmen Tallis Gomes and Pedro Sang. A petition filed in the case named the two men, described as allegedly tied to Rockbridge, as possible go-betweens for financial support to Bolsonaro’s campaign, Dino wrote.
“[It is] necessary to verify if there was the effective furnishment of resources — including human resources — services, or other measurable economic advantages, identifying its origin, its destination and its eventual use in the campaign,” Dino added, according to the Post’s translation.
Brazil law makes it a crime for a candidate to accept money or other campaign help from a foreign source, the Post reported.
Dino also ordered police to determine whether those funding talks were tied to foreign interest in Brazil’s rare earths and critical minerals, according to the order.
Police must find out who made any proposal, who received it and what was offered in return, Dino wrote. He added that those minerals belong to the federal government and can be mined only with its permission.
Dino placed the investigation under the Supreme Court’s direct supervision because members of Congress may have taken part, the order says. Bolsonaro is a sitting senator.
Bolsonaro’s opponents filed complaints that reached Brazil’s courts before the Oct. 25 runoff, including Lula’s Workers’ Party, the Post reported.
Renan Santos, a presidential candidate eliminated in the first round, alleged that Brazilians claiming to represent Rockbridge discussed U.S. support with Bolsonaro campaign officials, the Post reported. A person with direct knowledge told the Post that the same representatives also helped the Santos campaign.
“The Brazilians made false representations about their relationship with Rockbridge and created documents representing or referencing Rockbridge without Rockbridge’s knowledge or consent,” the network said in a statement Tuesday.
Still, Dino’s order directs police to identify who took part in contacts between Rockbridge representatives and Brazilian businessmen, and what those contacts were for.
The order also covers paid posts by foreign accounts that promoted Bolsonaro using odds from Polymarket, a prediction market banned in Brazil, and any deliberate manipulation of algorithms by internet companies to favor or hurt candidates.
Bolsonaro fled Brazil for the United States on Tuesday, the day of Dino’s ruling, in defiance of a separate Supreme Court order, three people with knowledge of the matter told the Post. A senior State Department official told the newspaper that he and his family will be issued visas to stay.
Dino also sent his decision to 10 federal agencies, including Brazil’s intelligence agency and its central bank, and told the federal police director to report the new case number back to the court, according to the order.
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