"Who should be judged, convicted and in prison is the journalist!" shouted congresswoman Katia Sastre, an ally of President Jair Bolsonaro.

And by some accounts that wasn't an empty threat: A conservative website reported that federal police had requested that financial regulators investigate Greenwald's finances. The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and his Brazilian husband also say they have been receiving detailed death threats, calls for his deportation and homophobic comments in an increasingly hostile political environment.

Greenwald, an attorney-turned-journalist who has long been a free-speech advocate, has found himself at the center of the first major test of press freedom under Bolsonaro, who took office on Jan. 1 and has openly expressed nostalgia for Brazil's 1964-1985 military dictatorship — a period when newspapers were censored and some journalists tortured.