(PL-SP) and Paulo Figueiredo, from the US threats against the Minister of the Supreme Court (STF), spent the past few weeks against the magistrate and Brazil. For Jean Galbraith, professor of international law at the University of Pennsylvania, “pointing names is the easy part.” Going further, however, is a different story.
According to the lawyer, a US foreign expert, “the real question is to what extent the treasure and the OFAC (Foreign Asset Control Office).”
Not that this softens the situation of Moraes, quite complicated in the evaluation of the academic. Extending the scope of punishments, however, is to assume “an additional attitude level that would require much more effort, capital and raise much more legal issues.”
Forcing Brazil’s departure, for example, would be a “too aggressive step” and would make the US have to deal with a much greater problem than its dispute with Brazil, which would be the international repercussion of such an act. Although on hostility in the White House and the US Department communications against Moraes and the Government, other American persecutions of the type show that the advance of US punishment is slower than rhetoric.
“In theory, this could already be being done against banks that transact with the Slovenian judge of the ICC, but you don’t see that,” says Galbraith. She refers to Beti Hohler, a US magistrate, sanctioned by the US for authorizing the arrest request against Israeli Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, for war crimes in the Gaza Strip.
Since February, which has not been recognized by the US, they have become the target of the State Department, as well as Francesca Albanese, UN independent rapporteur for the humanitarian situation in Gaza. In the understanding of the White House ,.
The dispute with TPI dates from Trump’s first term, when the problem was the investigation into the performance of US troops in Afghanistan. To include Israel as an argument in his current decrees, the president made a very wide interpretation of the IEEPA (International Emergency Economic Powers Law).
In seven months, Trump declared nine of these emergencies and cited them in hundreds of actions, according to a report in The New York Times. One of them was against Brazil, which had part of its products charged by 50% because Trump sees the former president’s trial as a witch hunt.
“Much of US foreign policy works like this: we have laws passed by Congress that are very vaguely written and give the president a lot of power. The agent then has a lot of discretion in how to use or sometimes abuse them. And the abuse is slow to be contested; this when they are,” says Galbraith.
Moraes was shot by a combination of IEEPA with the Global Magnitsky Law, forged in the US Congress to deal with corrupt politicians and human rights violators from other countries. The jurist sees a “very wide and aggressive” reading of the law to fit the performance of Moraes against Bolsonaro and in the issue related to freedom of expression.
Galbraith understands the punishment to the Brazilian minister as a “warning shot, being the tariffs the true objective”. Truth actions against the magistrate and other individuals in the country would require much more effort and capital of a managed administration at work.
Trump, after all, is in political and economic dispute with much of the planet. “It would not only require work, but governance and competence,” says Galbraith, suggesting that the American bureaucracy is skating in some departments.
Threatened private actors of sanction should wait to see, in the expert’s assessment. Brazilian banks, for example, squeezed in compliance with two conflicting legislation.
The evaluation is more complex when the Lula and Moraes government enter the equation. “I think there are some really complicated questions about what to do. It’s not a set of legal but political decisions. I’m not suggesting that Moraes change their legal approach. It’s hard because they are exerting them unilateral in a highly questionable way.”
Unlike last week, Galbraith sees limited options for Moraes in the American courts. Targets of secondary sanctions, however, can confront the scope of the laws used to determine the sanctions.
“One question is whether or not the scope of sanctions is within what magnitsky law deals with. We have human rights violations that meet this definition? This would be a difficult question for a court,” he says.
Another reasonable argument would be that the law itself limits the application of sanctions to people who help the sanctioned, such as those who do banking with it. They are placed on a list, but the law would only reach them if they really had helped him in underlying acts.
“The US Treasury and the President are interpreting the law inappropriately broadly. They use the uncertainty and fear that come together to fulfill the mission,” she says.
