The pair met with officials from the U.S. National Security Council, the State Department and Vance’s office, the people said. An AfD official, granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter, said they did not meet with the vice president.
A White House official confirmed the meeting and said that representatives of the national security council, the vice president’s office and the State Department attended.
The talks focused on democratic participation and election procedures in Germany, according to the AfD and White House officials. Paul, whose candidacy was disqualified by a German court earlier this year, was presented as a case study in what the AfD describes as the narrowing of political freedoms in Germany.
At the Munich Security Conference in February, Vance raised eyebrows by questioning Germany’s political “firewall” against the AfD, a political agreement by other forces not to include the far-right party in governance. Mainstream parties say the policy is intended to avoid a repeat of country’s Nazi era.
In a speech focused on democratic representation, Vance argued that excluding the far-right party from dialogue undermines voter legitimacy. “There is no place for firewalls,” Vance said, in comments interpreted by most as referring to German politics. Later, in Munich, Vance went a step further by holding a meeting with AfD co-leader Alice Weidel.
The meetings also touched on the case of Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro, who was last week imprisoned for 27 years for attempting a coup following his loss in Brazil’s 2022 election. Eduardo, a federal deputy in Brazil’s Congress who also faces criminal charges and is living in the U.S. under self-imposed exile, has built close ties with right-wing networks in the United States and Europe.