(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., has appeared to endorse a plan for activist judges to wage a coup, upending the will of the people, in order to imprison President Donald Trump on a spurious claim of “election denialism.”
Brazil is sending its election denier to prison for 27 years. We sent ours back to the White House. Brazil already lived under military dictatorship and saw the threat clearly. We failed to protect our democracy. We need to learn from Brazil before it’s too late. pic.twitter.com/0APO5vdPVm
— Ed Markey (@SenMarkey) September 12, 2025
Although Markey did not state his seditious intent outright, he couched it in an endorsement of a New York Times op-ed cheering Brazil’s corrupt court ruling against its former president, Jair Bolsonaro.
“Brazil is sending its election denier to prison for 27 years. We sent ours back to the White House,” Markey wrote. “… We need to learn from Brazil before it’s too late.”
The op-ed in question, written jointly by professors at Harvard and Johns Hopkins universities, suggested that justice had been served after a tribunal of five judges voted four to one to convict Bolsonaro, giving the 70-year-old statesman what effectively amounted to a life sentence to prevent him from further impacting Brazilian politics.
Touted as the “Trump of the Tropics,” he succeeded in unseating far-left socialist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva amid a populist wave in the country’s 2018 election. But as was the case in the 2020 U.S. election, Bolsonaro was overcome by institutional election-meddling, led by a handful of powerful judges, and forced to cede the presidency back to “Lula.”
For instance: “On Election Day, the Superior Electoral Tribunal took several steps to ensure the integrity of the vote, including ordering the dismantling of illegal checkpoints established by pro-Bolsonaro police and announcing the results immediately after the vote count concluded so that Mr. Bolsonaro would not have time to contest them,” Markey’s recent Times op-ed shamelessly boasted.
Mass uprisings resulted, leading to the arrest of Bolsonaro and accusations of an attempted “coup” that—once again—mirrored, in many ways, the lawfare waged against Trump during the Biden administration.
To further suppress scrutiny of its shady election-meddling, Brazil’s tribunal court, led by corrupt left-wing justice Alexandre de Moraes, began targeting Bolsonaro’s supporters for persecution.
“Under Justice Moraes, the court suspended the social media accounts of activists it found had engaged in anti-democratic online activity, ordered the removal of some online content it deemed threatening to democracy, searched the homes of pro-Bolsonaro businessmen who were alleged to have supported a coup, and even arrested a pro-Bolsonaro congressman who had called for dictatorship and the dissolution of the court,” the Times op-ed rejoiced.
“… These measures were controversial in Brazil, and they are certainly somewhat at odds with America’s libertarian tradition, but they were broadly consistent with how Germany and other European democracies regulate anti-democratic speech,” it added.
Bolsonaro’s supporters, who continue to decry the stolen election, now look to Trump for some form of intervention.
🇧🇷🇧🇷🇧🇷🇧🇷. 🆘 🇺🇲 @trumpbarronw
SOMOS TODOS BOLSONARO pic.twitter.com/6VeMkKpFal— Liese🇧🇷 (@LieseLili) September 9, 2025
Trump has denounced the rampant judicial corruption in Brazil and warned that allowing de Moraes to remain in power would result in economic consequences.
“Alexandre de Moraes has taken it upon himself to be judge and jury in an unlawful witch hunt against U.S. and Brazilian citizens and companies,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in July, according to Fox News. “De Moraes is responsible for an oppressive campaign of censorship, arbitrary detentions that violate human rights, and politicized prosecutions—including against former President Jair Bolsonaro.”
Markey’s dogwhistle call for an anti-Trump coup by the deep state echoes the justifications used by the Obama administration and its intelligence operatives to stage a seditious coup against Trump as part of the Russia-gate conspiracy.
It also follows a long tradition of Democrats and deep-state operatives accusing their targets of threatening “democracy,” then using the baseless accusations as a pretense to cast off all reasonable guardrails and redresses to their own anti-democratic practices.
Serious investigative journalists—including Lee Smith and Glenn Greenwald—are among those who have denounced Brazil’s kangaroo court.
Greenwald—a longtime Democrat who gained renown for exposing the NSA spying scandal during the Obama administration—noted that the judicial panel adjudicating Bolsonaro’s case had a stacked deck.
The verdict in Bolsonaro's case — for allegedly plotting an attempted coup — is expected this week.
Brazil's Supreme Court has 11 justices. But the case will be judged only by 5 of them. His conviction is 100% guaranteed. Meet the 5 judges the case went to: pic.twitter.com/DMpLeqDLLd
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) September 9, 2025
Smith—famous for being one of the leading journalists to expose the Russia-gate hoax and its attempted cover-up—noted that Markey’s comments followed a familiar playbook.
“Democrat official promoting leftwing criminality against the right, in this case: arrest all our opponents for practicing free speech,” Smith wrote. “Nothing has changed.”
Democrat official promoting leftwing criminality against the right, in this case: arrest all our opponents for practicing free speech. Nothing has changed. https://t.co/P5wivD8IYL
— Lee Smith (@LeeSmithDC) September 14, 2025
Ben Sellers is a freelance writer and former editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/realbensellers.
