The chief of staff, Mark Meadows, allegedly pressured the Justice Department and the FBI to investigate a series of conspiracy theories regarding alleged electoral fraud that would lead to Joe Biden’s victory.
In the final weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency, his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, pressured the Justice Department and the FBI to investigate a series of conspiracy theories regarding alleged election fraud that would lead to Joe Biden’s victory. This is what the New York Times reveals, on the basis of emails delivered to Congress, specifying that among these unfounded conspiracy theories, there was the one circulated on far-right social media with the hashtag #Italygate. This delusional conspiracy theory argued that Italy would use military technology and satellites to remotely intervene on voting machines in the United States to shift the votes for Trump to Joe Biden. THE
The five suspicious emails
In five emails sent between late December and early January, Meadows insistently asked Jeffrey A. Rosen, then interim minister of justice after William Barr’s resignation in open protest with Trump over contesting the election results, to launch investigations into Italygate and other conspiracy theories that inflamed the forums of the American far right in those weeks.
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No proof that Rosen accepted
No emails show that Rosen actually agreed to order an investigation. Indeed, the email addressed to another Justice Department official specifies that Rosen had refused to arrange a meeting between the FBI and “a man who posted the videos online promoting the conspiracy theory of Italygate,” wrote the Times. without giving details of this person’s identity.