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Mark Meadows and Donald Trump (October 2020)
Photo: ALEXANDER DRAGO / REUTERS
There are plenty of fairy tales about alleged fraud in the 2020 US election - but this variant sounds sufficiently bizarre.
It goes like this: According to the supporters of the "Italygate" conspiracy myth, voting machines in the USA were influenced by Italian military satellites.
This alleged manipulation contributed to Joe Biden's victory over Donald Trump.
As has now become known, this myth also had proponents in the White House.
At least, emails show that the then President Trump's chief of staff had contacted Acting Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen about the matter.
As the "New York Times" reports, Mark Meadows sent a total of five emails to Rosen in December 2020 and January 2021.
In one of these messages he asked the Minister of Justice to initiate an investigation into "Italygate".
Investigations would have brought legitimacy
With such an official investigation, the Justice Department would have given the conspiracy tale some legitimacy.
To support his demand, Meadows sent a link to a YouTube video in which a former CIA employee commented on "Italygate".
Meadows was unsuccessful: Minister Rosen refused to open an investigation into Italygate or any of the other conspiracy myths.
The incident is further evidence of Trump's efforts to abuse the Justice Department for his own purposes.
Because he encountered resistance from Rosen, Trump had apparently considered in the last days of his presidency to make one of his supporters the Minister of Justice.
The lawyer Jeffrey Clark, according to a report in the New York Times in January, should then have illegally helped Trump to win the election in Georgia.
Many Americans believe the fairy tales
Trump and his camp had repeatedly falsely claimed that the Democrats' narrow victory in the state was based on fraud.
An audio recording published by the Washington Post can be heard as Trump, in a telephone call, pressured the election officer, Brad Raffensperger, to "find" 11,780 votes.
Ultimately, Trump has not been able to provide any evidence to support his claims and all of his lawsuits have been dismissed by the courts.
However, the ex-president reached large parts of the population with his fairy tales.
According to a survey, almost a quarter of adult US citizens believe that Trump's election on November 3, 2020 was stolen by illegal votes.
As many as 53 percent of Republicans believe that Trump is the "real president," compared with 3 percent of Democrats and 25 percent of Americans, according to an opinion poll by Reuters / Ipsos from May 17-19.
In 2007, adults were surveyed, including 909 Democrats and 754 Republicans.
In the Republican Party, there is now open speculation about a political comeback by Trump and a renewed candidacy for the White House.
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