While critics say his measures are authoritarian, abusive, anti-constitutional, and partisan, to supporters they are legal, albeit stern, and have been necessary to maintain the country's democratic rule, preventing coups and the rise of extremism.

Moraes' presidency of Brazil's Superior Electoral Court and certain actions he took during the 2022 Brazilian general election has made him the target of criticism, including some false conspiracy theories, by Bolsonaro and his supporters.

The latter was living under the threat of a hacker who had hacked into the cell phone of his wife, Marcela Temer, and demanded 300,000 reais under penalty of releasing compromising information and photos.

He was at the centre of another controversy when the Brazilian newspaper Estadão published an investigation claiming that he had intervened to defend the Transcooper cooperative, suspected of being linked to Brazil's main drug trafficking group, the First Command of the Capital (PCC), which he denied.

[27] On 19 March 2022, Moraes ordered the suspension of the messaging app Telegram, accusing it of repeatedly failing to block accounts spreading disinformation, and ignoring previous court decisions.

President Bolsonaro called the ruling "inadmissible", while Telegram founder Pavel Durov blamed the company's failings on email issues, pledging to do a better job.

[28] In October 2022, the Superior Electoral Court gave Moraes the unilateral authority to order the removal of online content that did not comply with previous TSE rulings, as part of an effort to combat disinformation.

[29] On 30 October 2022, during the second round of the presidential election between Bolsonaro and Lula da Silva, hundreds of roadblocks set up by the Federal Highway Police (PRF), under orders from the government, prevented voters from going to the polls in the Nordeste region of Brazil.

The article questioned if the decisions of Moraes were beneficial for democracy, and observed that he "has jailed people without trial for posting threats on social media; helped sentence a sitting congressman to nearly nine years in prison for threatening the court; ordered raids on businessmen with little evidence of wrongdoing; suspended an elected governor from his job; and unilaterally blocked dozens of accounts and thousands of posts on social media, with virtually no transparency or room for appeal.

[35] In April 2024, X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk accused Moraes of "brazenly and repeatedly betraying the constitution and people of Brazil" in response to the Supreme Federal Court's order to block several X accounts, arguing combat of misinformation as the reason.

[36][37][38][39] In August 2024, X's press service accused Moraes of threatening to arrest the social network's employees in Brazil for failing to comply with blocking orders.

[40][41] On August 30, 2024, X was suspended nationwide for failing to follow the directive, and Moraes set a fine of 50,000 Brazilian reais (roughly $8,900 USD) per day for anyone using VPNs to access it.

[42] Shortly thereafter, X created the @AlexandreFiles account, purportedly in order to "reveal the unlawful directives issued to X by Alexandre de Moraes" and posted several allegedly illegal court requests that had made of X.

With Moraes, tougher decisions are also expected in relation to the prison system and drug consumption, in addition to more developed stances on public spending cuts.