On Wednesday, Trump Media, along with the social media company Rumble, initiated legal proceedings against a Brazilian Supreme Court justice following his clash with Elon Musk, which resulted in the blocking of Musk’s social media platform, X, in Brazil.
Filed in a Tampa, Florida, federal court, the lawsuit accuses Justice Alexandre de Moraes of attempting to censor a “well-known politically outspoken user” of Rumble by ordering the suspension of the user’s U.S.-based accounts.
The lawsuit emphasises that Trump Media’s social media platform, Truth Social, “relies on Rumble’s cloud-based hosting and video streaming infrastructure to deliver multimedia content to its user base.”
“Rumble and [Trump Media] jointly seek a judgment declaring Justice Moraes’s Gag Orders unenforceable in the United States,” the suit says. “Allowing Justice Moraes to muzzle a vocal user on an American digital outlet would jeopardize our country’s bedrock commitment to open and robust debate. Neither extraterritorial dictates nor judicial overreach from abroad can override the freedoms protected by the U.S. Constitution and law.”
The lawsuit was filed a day after Brazil’s prosecutor-general charged former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro with attempting a coup following his defeat in the 2022 election. Bolsonaro, who attended President Donald Trump’s inauguration last month, is accused of participating in a plot involving nearly three dozen individuals, which allegedly included plans to poison current Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and kill Moraes.
In December, Trump, who had previously owned the majority of Trump Media stock shares, transferred his entire stake to a revocable trust where he is the sole beneficiary.
The lawsuit references Musk’s dispute with Moraes, during which the justice suspended X in Brazil because Musk defied requests to ban certain user accounts and remove content that Moraes claimed violated the country’s laws.
Brazil’s Supreme Court also suspended bank accounts in that country belonging to X and Starlink, the satellite internet service provider owned by Musk’s company SpaceX, as part of that conflict.
Trump Media CEO Devin Nunes stated on Wednesday regarding the suit that the company “is firmly committed to upholding the right to free expression.”
“This is not just a slogan, it’s the core mission of this company,” Nunes said. “We’re proud to join our partner Rumble in standing against unjust demands for political censorship regardless of who makes them.”