Trump Posts Discredited Conspiracy Theories After FBI Seizes Georgia Ballots
Following the FBI’s seizure of 2020 election ballots from Fulton County, Georgia on Wednesday, President Trump posted multiple discredited conspiracy theories on his social media platform. Trump reposted a false claim that Italian military satellites were used to hack voting machines to flip votes from him to Joe Biden, adding that “China reportedly coordinated the whole operation” and “The CIA oversaw it, the FBI covered it up, all to install Biden as a puppet.” Trump declared “This is only the beginning” and “Prosecutions are coming,” directly linking these baseless allegations to the FBI’s ballot seizure.
Trump also reposted fabricated claims about the 2016 election, falsely asserting that “Barack Hussein Obama” falsified intelligence and “conspired with foreign powers…to overthrow the United States government in 2016″—a claim that ignores Obama was president at the time. The Italian satellite conspiracy theory originated in 2021 when then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows directed the Department of Justice and Department of Defense to investigate it after a woman using aliases including “The Heiress” passed material to a national security council official in a supermarket parking lot. Trump and his supporters have promoted numerous unsubstantiated election fraud narratives, including claims by lawyer Sydney Powell in 2020 that voting machines were rigged using software “created at the direction of Hugo Chavez”—despite Chavez’s death three years prior.
The FBI seizure of Georgia ballots follows coordinated pressure from Trump-aligned state and federal officials, including the Georgia State Election Board’s October 2024 vote to subpoena 2020 materials and Attorney General Pam Bondi’s letters citing unsubstantiated “anomalies.” Law professor Rick Hasen characterized the action as “a way to use the might of the federal government to further Trump’s voter fraud narratives,” while Derek Clinger of the University of Wisconsin Law School called it “a dramatic escalation in the Trump administration’s efforts to expand federal control” over state-run election infrastructure. Georgia has audited and certified its 2020 results, and numerous lawsuits challenging the election were rejected by courts, including by Trump-appointed judges.
Powell pleaded guilty in 2023 to Georgia state charges of conspiracy to intentionally interfere with election duties, agreeing to six years of probation and a $6,000 fine. Her recent appearance with DOJ official Ed Martin in a Thursday morning social media post signals her involvement in Trump administration efforts to weaponize federal authority against prior election officials and investigators, directly advancing Trump’s targeting of prosecutors like Fani Willis who brought charges related to his 2020 election interference.
Trump has sustained his unfounded fraud claims for years, pressuring Georgia officials to “find” votes and filing over 60 lawsuits nationwide to overturn the election—all dismissed. At the World Economic Forum, Trump called the 2020 election “rigged” and stated that “people will soon be prosecuted for what they did,” establishing intent to weaponize federal authority against political opponents and consolidating control over election administration through federal seizure of state ballots and records.