The Washington Post reports:

Brazil has denied visas to two senior State Department officials whom the Trump administration planned to dispatch on a mission to cast doubt on the fairness and integrity of the country’s electoral system before millions of Brazilians vote in a presidential election on Oct. 4, the Foreign Ministry said Saturday.

A U.S. State Department delegation, including Trump political appointees Riley M. Barnes, an assistant secretary, and Samuel Samson, a deputy assistant secretary, had planned to depart for Brasília, the capital, in coming days, according to a senior State Department official and three Brazilian officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.

But Brazilian officials, apprised of the plans, denied the Americans permission to travel, the Foreign Ministry said. The U.S. officials applied for visas through the Brazilian consulate in Washington, saying they planned to hold “meetings with authorities involved in the electoral process,” Brazilian officials said.

Samson has traveled from Africa to Europe, promoting President Donald Trump’s brand of conservative politics and cultivating ties to right-wing groups, at times alienating establishment politicians.

It was unclear whom the U.S. diplomats had planned to meet or how they would impugn a system long seen as an electoral standard-bearer in South America, returning results within hours of Brazilians casting their ballots.

Two senior Brazilian officials told The Washington Post on Thursday that they had recently learned of what they described as the American “ploy” and had vowed to block the U.S. officials from entering the country.

“It is a ploy that is completely incompatible with Brazilian democracy,” said one of the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. This official said the Brazilian government would move to “protect our voting system.”

The Brazilian officials said they suspected that the Americans’ goal was to meet with electoral skeptics and produce a report that could be used to delegitimize the nation’s electronic voting system. Samson in the past has produced department reports that critics say brought a partisan lens to human rights issues. [Continue reading…]