Italy and the CIA stole the 2020 election using a satellite (Italygate)
The Italygate theory claimed Italy and US officials switched 2020 votes via an Italian military satellite. It is baseless, and the Italians cited as arrested were detained for unrelated industrial espionage.
What we know
Ahead of January 6, 2021, Trump pressed the Department of Justice to investigate a theory that Barack Obama and Italy's then prime minister had conspired to hack US voting machines using an Italian military satellite. The theory became known as Italygate.
The claim was entirely unsupported. There was no evidence that any satellite altered US votes. The two Italian employees sometimes cited as having been arrested in connection with the plot were in fact detained for unrelated industrial espionage, not for interfering in the US election.
Reporting by Vice and others documented how DOJ officials regarded the pressure to investigate Italygate as baseless. The theory is a clear example of an election conspiracy that collapses once its specific factual claims are checked.
The Italygate theory originated from a former Italian defense contractor employee who claimed, without presenting verifiable evidence, that he had helped orchestrate the satellite hack from an Italian military base and later gave sworn testimony repeating the claim in an Italian court proceeding. Italian authorities and journalists who investigated found no corroborating technical evidence, and Logically Facts and other fact-checking organizations that reviewed the court testimony found the underlying claims relied on the same unverified source without independent confirmation. USA Today's review of the theory found that the specific satellite named in various versions of the story either did not exist in the configuration described or was not physically capable of the described interference with voting machine software.
The theory nonetheless reached senior levels of government, with reports indicating that Trump discussed the idea directly with the acting Attorney General and pushed for a Justice Department investigation before leaving office. Career DOJ officials reportedly resisted opening a formal inquiry given the absence of credible evidence, and no subsequent investigation by any US or Italian authority ever substantiated the claim. The episode is frequently cited by researchers who study the 2020 election conspiracy ecosystem as an example of how a claim with essentially no supporting evidence could still gain enough traction to reach the highest levels of government decision-making. Congressional and journalistic reviews of the broader 2020 election conspiracy landscape have grouped Italygate alongside other rapidly debunked theories, noting that its reliance on a single uncorroborated source and its lack of any technical documentation made it one of the easier claims for investigators to rule out, even as it continued to circulate in some political circles well after being publicly discredited. The Italian government itself, through its embassy and foreign ministry, publicly denied any involvement in the alleged plot, further isolating the claim from any form of official corroboration on either side of the Atlantic. The claim did not survive contact with basic verification by career officials. No later reporting from any credible outlet has reopened the question.
Common claims
- Italy switched US votes using a military satellite.Not supported
- People were arrested for the Italygate plot.Not supported