Trump Reposts Italian-Satellite Election Conspiracy Theories After the FBI Ballot Seizure: 'Prosecutions Are Coming'

In the hours after FBI agents seized 2020 ballots in Fulton County, Georgia, on January 28, 2026, President Trump posted and reposted a series of discredited conspiracy theories about the 2020 and 2016 elections on Truth Social. Among them was a claim that Italian military satellites were used to hack U.S. voting machines to flip votes to Joe Biden, asserting that "China reportedly coordinated the whole operation. The CIA oversaw it, the FBI covered it up, all to install Biden as a puppet." Trump tied the posts directly to the FBI action: "This is only the beginning. Prosecutions are coming."

He also amplified a claim that Barack Obama falsified intelligence and "conspired with foreign powers" four times to overthrow the government in 2016 — an assertion ABC News noted is not only baseless but incoherent, since Obama was the sitting president. The Italian satellite theory had already been examined and dismissed inside the first Trump White House in 2021.

Georgia audited and certified its 2020 results, and courts rejected every challenge brought there.