SÃO PAULO -- Brazil has denied visas to two senior Trump administration officials who were planning to travel to the country, amid concerns that they sought to undermine confidence in the electronic-voting system before October's presidential election.

The move comes as fears deepen in Brazil that the Bolsonaro family is working with President Trump and his allies to unseat leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and help return the Brazilian right to power.

Former President Jair Bolsonaro is serving a 27-year prison sentence at home for plotting a coup ahead of the last presidential election. His eldest son, Flávio, was formally nominated as the right-wing candidate on Saturday at a party convention attended by Argentine President Javier Milei, an ideological ally.

Brazil's Foreign Ministry said Saturday it had denied visas for Riley M. Barnes, assistant secretary from the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, and Samuel Samson, a deputy assistant secretary of state.

Brazil's government believes the planned delegation is part of a concerted effort by Jair Bolsonaro's sons -- including his son Eduardo, who lives in the U.S. -- to discredit the elections in case Flávio Bolsonaro loses in October, said people close to da Silva.

The U.S. State Department confirmed that Barnes and Samson were set to visit Brazil early next week to hold meetings about election integrity, religious freedom, and freedom of expression. "Any insinuation of a 'ploy' to undermine a democratic nation's election is a baseless lie," the department said in a statement, calling it a routine visit.

Brazilian officials said alarm bells went off in the capital of Brasília earlier this week when Flávio Bolsonaro told diplomats that the country's electronic-voting machines were produced by the Venezuelan company Smartmatic, insinuating they were vulnerable to fraud.

Brazil's election court has rejected those claims, saying that Smartmatic has never supplied voting machines used in Brazilian elections and that international observers have consistently found the country's system to be secure.

Four years ago, Jair Bolsonaro summoned dozens of foreign ambassadors to the presidential residence to question the integrity of Brazil's electronic-voting system -- a defining moment in his campaign to discredit the elections that would later see him banned from politics and then jailed.

Speaking at his nomination ceremony on Saturday, Flávio vowed to carry on his father's legacy, accusing Brazil's Supreme Court of working with da Silva's government to restrict freedom of speech, with his father's imprisonment held up as exhibit A.

"Brazil has been kidnapped, and we are going to free our country from this captivity," he told cheering crowds.

Jailed in November last year and later released to house arrest because of health complications stemming from the 2018 stabbing that nearly killed him, Jair Bolsonaro was barred from taking part in the nominating ceremony of his son, even remotely. But his party, the Liberal Party, used artificial intelligence to project a video of the former president endorsing his son's candidacy.

Argentina's Milei also addressed the gathering, urging conservatives to unite to defeat socialism across the continent.

"Brazil can join the regional transformation that, in recent years, has allowed Latin America to shed its image as a land of romanticized poverty," Milei said, "and become a synonym for progress."

Write to Samantha Pearson at samantha.pearson@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 25, 2026 20:40 ET (00:40 GMT)

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