{"id":46602,"date":"2021-01-10T07:04:15","date_gmt":"2021-01-10T11:04:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=46602"},"modified":"2021-01-10T07:04:15","modified_gmt":"2021-01-10T11:04:15","slug":"italygate-you-know-the-democrat-election-thieves-are-very-nervous-when-the-msm-runs-a-hit-piece-like-this-on-the-vatican-obama-renzi-affair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=46602","title":{"rendered":"ITALYgate<\/b>: You know the Democrat election thieves are VERY nervous when the MSM runs a hit piece like this on the “Vatican-Obama-Renzi Affair”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fact check: Claims of electoral fraud in Rome, dubbed ‘ItalyGate,’ are baseless<\/h1>\n

Camille Caldera
\nUSA TODAY<\/p>\n

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The claim: Votes were switched from Trump to Biden at the U.S. Embassy in Rome<\/h2>\n

At 3:41\u00a0a.m. on Jan. 7,\u00a0Vice President Mike Pence\u00a0confirmed\u00a0that President-elect Joe Biden defeated President Donald Trump \u2014 an act that marked the formal\u00a0end of the presidential race, per\u00a0USA TODAY<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, some internet users\u00a0have continued\u00a0to levy baseless\u00a0claims about electoral fraud. This week, there were multiple videos posted to Facebook that alleged the vote count was changed in Rome.<\/p>\n

Pages like\u00a0Conversation Controversy<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Trump Train News Media<\/a>\u00a0shared a 52-minute video in which Maria Strollo Zack explains the theory, dubbed “ItalyGate.”<\/p>\n

“The theft of the election was orchestrated in the Rome Embassy, on the second floor of Via Veneto, by an employee, Stefano Serafini, foreign service officer of over 20 years,” she said. “Stefano Serafini coordinated with a General Claudio Graziano.”<\/p>\n

“General Graziano\u00a0is on the board of Leonardo \u2014\u00a0the defense contractor, Leonardo SPA,” Strollo Zack continued.\u00a0“Leonardo used their military satellite uplink to load the software and transfer it over to change the votes from Trump to Biden.”<\/p>\n

She also alleged that recent arrests of employees at Leonardo were related to the incident, and that the plan was orchestrated by former President Barack Obama, with help from former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and the CIA.<\/p>\n

Strollo Zack\u00a0\u2014\u00a0a former lobbyist and current chair of Nations in Action, an organization established in 2017 and dedicated to advocating for families, according to its\u00a0website<\/a>\u00a0\u2014\u00a0also made an appeal for funds to help her gather more evidence.<\/p>\n

Conversation Controversy<\/a> also shared a 13-minute video in which retired CIA station chief\u00a0Bradley Johnson shares a similar version of the theory, connected to another debunked\u00a0theory about election servers in Frankfurt, Germany.<\/p>\n

“The U.S. elections were changed, the results were changed in those five or six key states, then all of those voting machines were hooked up to the internet,” he said. “The internet then was used to download that information to these famous servers in Germany.”<\/p>\n

“So from there, those were uploaded and sent to Rome, and this is where this took place,” he continued.\u00a0“Once they created all the new data and manipulated all the data that was there, they sent these new numbers back up through this military satellite (…)\u00a0and back down to all the machines here in the United States in those five or six states.”<\/p>\n

Johnson also claimed the time it took to upload the\u00a0data to servers in Germany and Italy, manipulate it in Italy, and send it back to the U.S. was\u00a0the source of the “sudden” uptick in votes for Biden in some states.<\/p>\n

“ItalyGate” has quickly\u00a0spread to around the internet. The three videos have amassed a\u00a0combined 100,000\u00a0views and 7,000 shares on Facebook.\u00a0An interview of\u00a0Strollo Zack on\u00a0America Can We Talk?<\/a>\u00a0on YouTube has also garnered over 400,000 views.<\/p>\n

Conversation Controversy,\u00a0Strollo Zack, American Can We Talk?\u00a0have not responded to requests from USA TODAY for comment.<\/p>\n

Trump Train News Media told USA TODAY that they are not responsible for the content, since it was sent to the page to share.<\/p>\n

Johnson told USA TODAY that “it\u2019s clear from Italian newspapers this is going on,” though he provided no proof.<\/p>\n

More:<\/strong>Fact check: Story of Army raid to seize election servers in Germany is false<\/a><\/p>\n

No evidence of\u00a0switched votes or electoral fraud, per multiple officials<\/h2>\n

The claims in both videos on “ItalyGate” are baseless. They are also easily\u00a0contradicted by statements from multiple federal officials who have found no proof of electoral fraud.<\/p>\n

On Nov. 12, a\u00a0national coalition of election security officials announced that “there is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised,” per\u00a0USA TODAY<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“All of the states with close results in the 2020 presidential race have paper records of each vote, allowing the ability to go back and count each ballot if necessary,” they wrote. “This is an added benefit for security and resilience. This process allows for the identification and correction of any mistakes or errors.”<\/p>\n

\"Voters<\/p>\n
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The coalition \u2014\u00a0which\u00a0included\u00a0the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency and the National Association of State Election Directors \u2014\u00a0also deemed\u00a0the\u00a0election “the most secure in American history.”<\/p>\n

On Dec. 1,\u00a0then-Attorney General William Barr also told the\u00a0Associated Press<\/a>\u00a0that the U.S. Justice Department had uncovered no evidence of\u00a0widespread voter fraud.<\/p>\n

An apparent uptick in votes for Biden in some states also wasn’t proof of malfeasance.<\/p>\n

USA TODAY<\/a>,\u00a0Reuters<\/a>,\u00a0PolitiFact<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0Associated Press<\/a> have debunked these claims.\u00a0Most “spikes” were caused by late-counted absentee\u00a0ballots, which tended to\u00a0skew Democratic, or\u00a0left-leaning counties that released results in large batches.<\/p>\n

Aspects of ItalyGate easily disproven, details inaccurate<\/h2>\n

Some aspects of the claims in the videos are also easily disproven.<\/p>\n

For example, the theory relies on\u00a0the notion that votes were changed via satellite, software or\u00a0the internet. But hand recounts of paper ballots have confirmed election results in at least one contested state and locality.<\/p>\n

In Georgia, officials performed a weeklong statewide audit of paper ballots that affirmed a narrow victory for Biden, per\u00a0USA TODAY<\/a>. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said the audit\u00a0“reaffirmed that the state\u2019s new secure paper ballot voting system accurately counted and reported results.”<\/p>\n

A hand tally of every vote cast for president in Antrim County, Michigan, also confirmed that its machine-tabulated results were correct, per the\u00a0Detroit Free Press<\/a>. Out of 15,962 votes cast, the hand recount showed a net gain of 12 votes for Trump, who won the county but lost the state.<\/p>\n

Multiple details in the videos are also\u00a0inaccurate.<\/p>\n

Gen. Claudio Graziano\u00a0is not listed as a member of the board of directors at Leonardo, per its\u00a0website<\/a>. Graziano\u00a0serves as\u00a0the chairman of the\u00a0European Union Military Committee, per a website run by the\u00a0European Union<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Leonardo and\u00a0Graziano have not responded to requests from USA TODAY\u00a0for comment.<\/p>\n

Employees of\u00a0Leonardo were arrested on Dec. 5, but they were arrested for\u00a0their alleged role in hacking the company’s computers to\u00a0steal sensitive information between 2015 and 2017, per\u00a0Reuters<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And there was no raid of\u00a0election servers in Germany.\u00a0USA TODAY<\/a> has previously debunked that theory, since the\u00a0U.S. Army denied preforming such a raid, and the company whose purported servers were seized didn’t even have servers in Germany.<\/p>\n

Proponents of\u00a0“ItalyGate” have also claimed that the news\u00a0media in Italy has covered the scandal.\u00a0However, the Italian\u00a0news feeds of the the Associated Press, Reuters, and\u00a0Sky News\u00a0and contained no references to any of the\u00a0claims, per\u00a0Lead Stories<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Our rating: False<\/h2>\n

Based on our research, the claim that votes were switched from Trump to Biden at the U.S. Embassy in Rome is FALSE.\u00a0There was no evidence of switched votes or electoral fraud in the presidential election, per multiple officials. “ItalyGate” relies on the notion that\u00a0votes were changed via satellite, software, or\u00a0the internet. But hand recounts of paper ballots have confirmed election\u00a0results in at least one contested state and locality. And other details of the theory are inaccurate and easily debunked.<\/p>\n

Our fact-check sources:<\/h2>\n