TPM’s Josh Kovensky this morning delves into the origins of one of the most “whackadoodle Big Lie claims” popular in the Maga-QAnon-sphere. ItalyGate alleges that in the middle of the night in November 2020, “An Italian defense contractor teamed up with the U.S. Embassy in Rome to use satellite transmissions to switch millions of Trump votes to Biden votes, thus stealing the election.”
No, really. Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows asked the Department of Justice to look into it. The DOJ thought he was nuts. TPM has identified other purveyors of this wild-ass theory:
It’s not clear where the bogus allegations originated. But one of the earliest examples of them spreading, Reuters reported, was in a December 2020 recording of a Florida woman named Maria Zack.
Zack runs Nations in Action, a non-profit that describes itself as devoted to addressing “the collapse of the civil society with families struggling to maintain faith, values and virtues.” A longtime conservative election law firm, Holtzman Vogel Josefiak Torchinsky, incorporated the company.
It has not been previously reported that longtime Heritage Foundation fellow Hans von Spakovsky, a leading voter fraud alarmist, served on the board of Nations in Action. More on von Spakovsky in a moment.
Nations in Action became one of ItalyGate’s main proponents.
The theory even made it to Mar-a-Lago, where Zack said that on Christmas Eve she gave Trump a note about an affidavit that supposedly supported the allegations.
That would have been enough for Trump, clearly. Zack claims to have brought the affidavit to D.C. on Jan. 6. The group issued a press release claiming proof enough “for each state to recall their slate of electors immediately.”
Having von Spakovsky, the Harold Hill of voter fraud, on the board of Nations in Action should be enough to discredit the rest. For his part, von Spakovsky claims he resigned on Jan. 8, was never really on the board, and has nothing to do with the ItalyGate conspiracy theory. His name on their corporate filing is “their mistake.”
But wait, there’s more. Nations in Action in a press release thanked the Institute for Good Governance for partnering on its investigation. The latter group is connected to one Michele Roosevelt Edwards, who runs another firm called USAerospace Partners. The letter Meadows forwarded to Jeffrey A. Rosen at the DOJ originated with Carlo Gloria, allegedly with USAerospace Partners and typed on its letterhead.
TPM tried to reach both Goria and Roosevelt Edwards to gain clarity on why these companies were promoting allegations that Italy changed the result of the 2020 election.
Someone at a number listed for Goria picked up the phone but hung up after a TPM reporter identified himself, and refused to take further calls.
There was more on Edwards Roosevelt, however. The USAerospace chair also goes by other names: Michele Ballarin, Michele Golden, and Amira Ballarin.
She denies knowledge of the letter Meadows obtained, etc., etc. It gets weirder from there.
Update: Weirder still.