Former State Department official Mike Benz laid out USAID’s sweeping involvement in Brazil’s political and institutional landscape, detailing a network of American funding that reached media organizations, universities, activist groups and organizations involved with the country’s election system.
Benz, who serves as executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, broke down the extent of USAID’s footprint during an appearance on “The Benny Show” with host Benny Johnson.
“What’s happening in Brazil was a full-on Truman show. You had the media funded by USAID. You had the universities funded by USAID. You had the staffers of the Supreme Court and the TSE (Superior Electoral Court), the election court, USAID. You had all the constitutional law advocates funded by USAID. You had the LGBT activists funded by USAID,” Benz explained.
“It’s full spectrum. If you were to walk down a city block in Sao Paulo or, I don’t know, Brasilia, you would have a 360 vision of institutions funded and puppeteered by USAID without ever knowing it,” the former State Department official added. “In fact, USAID, knowing what they were doing, and I need to be careful about what I can and can’t say here, let’s just say, would anyone be surprised, for example, if USAID was going around and telling its grantees in Brazil to remove the USAID logo so that it doesn’t get out that grantee’s connection to USAID?”
Benz said USAID’s influence could continue even after its funding disappeared because institutional and legal changes remained in place.
“They knew what they were doing. They knew how sensitive it was. Would you be surprised, for example, if USAID, which basically set up the censorship state in Brazil, and this is actually something, let me quickly pivot to say, it is true that this is the first Brazilian election since the 2020 municipal elections in Brazil that does not have USAID money slushing around Lula and his allies, but is still an election that is in many ways under the thumb of the ghost of USAID,” he said. “There is something I call kind of the clockmaker’s dilemma, which is USAID, even when you remove it, the institutional and legal changes that a country goes through can live on even if you cut USAID funding down to zero.”
Benz then zeroed in on two of Brazil’s most powerful institutions, the Supreme Federal Court (STF) and Superior Electoral Court (TSE): “For example, in Brazil, you have this apparatus through the STF and TSE, the Supreme Court and the basically election court that determines all things around elections, and basically after Bolsonaro won in 2018, the TSE court with Alexandre de Moraes, the famous Voldemort judge, they declared disinformation a threat to free and fair elections, not just disinformation during an election season, but disinformation any time, misinformation, disinformation any time about anything because it could pollute people’s, I don’t know, sense of what’s true or false in the information ecosystem, and so it could have an impact on an election three years away if this false information is allowed to circulate online.”
Benz also went into detail about USAID’s connections to Brazil’s election and judicial establishment.
“That was set up by USAID, USAID flooded the zone, USAID had contact at every level with the TSE court, with the Alexandre de Moraes court,” he said. “I testified to the Brazilian Senate Relations Committee and put pictures from USAID’s website of Alexandre de Moraes being trained by CEPS (Competitive Economy Program), the USAID grantee, by NED (National Endowment for Democracy), the USAID grantee has gotten $3 billion from USAID and was created by the Central Intelligence Agency.”
Benz’s remarks come just days after Brazil’s conservatives delivered a powerful showing at the ballot box. Flávio Bolsonaro finished first in the opening round of the presidential election, taking 47.03% of the vote to left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s 45.16%, setting up an October 25 runoff.
Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party emerged as the largest party in both houses of Congress, winning 121 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and expanding its Senate delegation from 15 to 28 seats.
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