President Donald Trump has offered a startling new explanation for amplifying the debunked “Italygate” conspiracy.
Late Wednesday night, Trump revived one of the most outlandish conspiracy theories from the aftermath of the 2020 election, reposting a claim on his social media platform suggesting Italian satellites were used to hack into U.S. voting machines and flip votes from Trump to Joe Biden.
One of the posts he shared asserted: “China reportedly coordinated the whole operation … the CIA oversaw it, the FBI covered it up, all to install Biden as a puppet.”
Experts have repeatedly debunked this so-called “Italygate” theory, which first surfaced in 2020 and alleged that the election had been rigged in favor of Biden through a scheme involving Italian military satellites and technology, with votes supposedly being switched from Trump to Biden remotely via systems linked to the U.S. Embassy in Rome and an Italian defense contractor.
The tale was promoted in some far-right and QAnon-aligned circles as part of broader unfounded fraud claims.
The theory even reached the highest levels of the Trump White House. In late December 2020 and early January 2021, then-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows forwarded emails about Italygate to acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, urging the Justice Department to investigate the outlandish allegations. Rosen’s aides dismissed the idea as “pure insanity,” and no credible evidence has ever emerged to support it.
Multiple fact-checks by Reuters, USA Today, and others have found no basis for the claims, noting the story’s implausible mechanics and lack of real evidence.
In an interview with NBC News on Wednesday, Trump was asked about election conspiracy theories he has promoted on social media, including the “Italygate” theory.
“Do you believe that stuff?” anchor Tom Llamas asked.
“No, no. No. No. … I sometimes will… retruth” those claims, Trump replied.
Trump’s late-night reposts on Truth Social came in the wake of an FBI seizure of 2020 ballots in Georgia and were part of a flurry of posts spreading baseless claims about his election loss. “This is only the beginning,” he wrote alongside other false allegations tied to the Georgia action, adding, “Prosecutions are coming.”
Trump’s reaction to the FBI’s move in Georgia also included resurrecting conspiracies about the 2016 election, reposting a claim that accused former President Barack Obama of falsifying intelligence and conspiring with multiple foreign powers to overthrow the U.S. government.
The claim is unsupported by evidence and widely dismissed, and critics note it is logically incoherent, as Obama was the sitting president in 2016—making the accusation tantamount to alleging he attempted to overthrow his own administration.
For years, Trump has promoted unfounded claims that the 2020 election—particularly in Georgia—was stolen, despite multiple audits, certifications, and court rulings affirming the results.
