NEW: Trump's 2016 Machine Ran Again in Brazil, Under Vance

Cambridge Analytica worked American voters for the Mercers in 2016. Rockbridge, Mercer-funded and Vance-founded, took the same model to Bolsonaro, and Brazil's top court has sent the police after it.

Matt Rourke/AP

The machine that worked American voters for Donald Trump in 2016 has been working Brazil's, and this time its co-founder is the vice president. On Tuesday, Oct. 27, Justice Flávio Dino of Brazil's Supreme Court ordered the Federal Police to find out whether Flávio Bolsonaro's campaign took foreign money through the Rockbridge Network, the donor group JD Vance co-founded, on petitions from Lula's party and a rival right-wing party. Bolsonaro landed in Miami the next morning.

Dino signed the order two days after Bolsonaro lost the runoff by 4.4 million votes. He wrote that the signs of foreign interference in the election were growing, and he gave the police a list. First, the dealings attributed to Rockbridge's representatives in Brazil, Tallis Gomes and Pedro Sang, and whether money, services or anything of value reached the campaign. Second, who hired and paid for campaign ads run from foreign accounts. Third, whether internet companies tilted their algorithms. Fourth, Brazil's rare earths and critical minerals, which Dino reminded everyone belong to the state.

Vance co-founded Rockbridge in 2019. Reuters put its budget near $75 million for the 2024 cycle, and Peter Thiel and Rebekah Mercer are its reported funders. The order names Vance as the co-founder, not as a target. Vance's office said nothing.

For weeks Rockbridge denied it had any plans for Brazil. Then it admitted it had registered a company called Rockbridge Brazil LLC in Wyoming in May, The Conversation reported from documents Intercept Brasil obtained; the staffer who filed it runs Vance's relationships with donors. Rockbridge says the company never took money, never operated, and that the Brazilians put its name on documents without permission. Sang, named in a document as executive director of the Brazil operation, says the council "was just an idea that never took off." Nine days after an ally wrote a memo on a Brazil-U.S. rare earths partnership, Bolsonaro stood at CPAC in Dallas and offered Brazil's minerals to break America's dependence on China.

Bolsonaro's campaign said it took no foreign money and would not comment on the order. Rockbridge told The Washington Post the Brazilians "made false representations about their relationship with Rockbridge."

Dino put no dollar figure in the order and charged no one. What he did was open the first police file on this network anywhere, as far as The Narativ could find. In 2016 the Mercers owned a piece of Cambridge Analytica, Steve Bannon was its vice president, and Trump's campaign paid it $6 million to profile 220 million American voters; Narativ reported the Mercer fortune and its Russian ties the next year. Rockbridge's reported funders are Rebekah Mercer and Peter Thiel, Trump phoned into its 2024 donor meeting, and its Brazil plan sold the same kit: donors, content, a council of businessmen around one candidate. Only the name out front changed, and it is a heartbeat from the presidency.

Bolsonaro took his father's road to Florida while the police went to work behind him. He missed the 11 a.m. passport deadline on Tuesday. He left the country that night with no record of his departure, Brazil's federal police said. On Wednesday he landed in Miami on visas the State Department had said would be granted. He faces a money-laundering investigation at home, and he will answer none of it from Miami.

The Federal Police will have Gomes, Sang and the ad buyers in a room long before they get anywhere near Wyoming, and Wyoming will not answer a Brazilian subpoena. The people who put up the money will stay out of reach, which explains why the company is registered in Wyoming.