Top Admin Officials — and Trump Himself — Are Clinging Hard To Insane Conspiracy Theories

Hello, it’s the weekend. It’s The Weekender ☕️

In some ways, we still live in the world that emerged in the month leading up to January 6th.

It was a period in which truly insane conspiracy theories were rising from the feverish swamps of Internet forums and being turned around by the Justice Department and other federal agencies, as Trump and his closest allies tried to pull every lever they could get their hands on in their desperate quest to overturn the election.

Among those conspiracy theories was ItalyGate, which Josh Kovensky revisits for TPM this week. It’s a theory close to TPM’s heart – in part because it was perhaps the most deranged of all. He argued that Obama secretly took money he got from Iran as payment for the 2015 nuclear deal and transferred it to Italian agents. In return, conspiracy theorists claim, an Italian defense contractor named Leonardo (of course) used military satellites to zap American voting machines, diverting ballots from Trump to Biden.

Mark Meadows, then Trump’s chief of staff, urged the Justice Department to look into the issue. Kash Patel, then the Defense Department official, tried to get the Pentagon to do the same.

Five years later, ItalyGate is not forgotten. In fact, Trump was talking about it on Truth Social on Wednesday, as the FBI raided the election office in Fulton County, Georgia, prompting “Stop the Steal” conspiracy theorists to lose their minds with joy. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who is leading a government-wide effort to reinvestigate the 2020 election, was on hand, upping the surreal quotient.

Fulton County was, of course, ground zero for misinformation about the 2020 election, as Nicole LaFond and Khaya Himmelman reminded us in the hours after the raid. It was, in the ItalyGate universe, one of the places whose voting machines were naturally zapped. There have also been many wild allegations about fraudulent ballot suitcases, ballot harvesting, mysterious ballot drop-offs, and more. Now, with Fulton County in the news again, we are forced to reacquaint ourselves with these theories as some of them resurface at the highest levels of government.

—John Light

Trump’s Chosen Fed Chairman Has Thoughts on Federal Reserve Independence

President Donald Trump’s nominee for Federal Reserve chairman, Kevin Warsh, is a vocal critic of the U.S. central bank who served as Federal Reserve governor during the global financial crisis.

In an April 2025 speech to a group of international central bankers and economists from the International Monetary Fund, Warsh addressed the most pressing issue facing the bank today: the independence of the Federal Reserve. Highlighted in the final section before the speech’s conclusion, Warsh separated the idea of ​​the independence of the Federal Reserve related to monetary policy from the independence of the central bank in its other, broader responsibilities. For the record, Warsh said he believes the Fed has become too big and too far removed from what he described as its primary role of controlling price inflation and supporting as many jobs as possible. And he didn’t do a very good job either.

“Independence is not a political goal in itself,” Warsh said.

More:

I firmly believe in the operational independence of monetary policy as a wise political economy decision. And I believe that the independence of the Fed depends primarily on the Fed.

This does not mean that central bankers should [be] treated like pampered princes. When monetary performance is poor, the Fed should be subject to serious questioning, strict oversight, and, if it is wrong, opprobrium.

A narrow central bank has more going for it than just tradition. Our constitutional republic accepts an independent central bank only if it strictly adheres to its congressionally mandated duty and successfully discharges its tasks. After all, this is our third central banking experiment…not because of the success of its predecessors, but because of their failure. We must remember that the revealed preference of the body politic is a deep distaste for inflation – but also for bailouts and power grabs.

The goal of governance is clear: it is about making the central bank safe for democracy, not about making democracy safe for the central bank.

-Layla A. Jones

Mike Lindell is still Mike Lindell

The founder of MyPillow and a major public face of the “Stop the Steal” movement is running for governor of Minnesota. I interviewed Lindell about his run for governor and the state of our election system.

As a reminder, Lindell is infamous for spreading wild lies about the 2020 election. One of my favorites was the conspiracy theory that an unnamed, foreign entity had (somehow??) systematically switched votes from Trump to Biden right under our noses. (See ItalyGate above.)

Lindell is still convinced that the 2020 election was stolen and that the voting machines are bad. I asked him how he could trust the results of his own race if, as he claims, the system was so dangerous.

I never got a clear answer, but I did get what it is:

“I would never trust any election done with voting machines. That’s why 132 countries have banned them. It’s very simple. Argentina was the last one in 2022 to ban them, and they liberated their country,” he said.

And when I asked him if he was still determined to prove that the 2020 election was stolen, he simply said that the “math” of that election was “impossible.”

—Khaya Himmelman

Trump Admin Continues to Invest in Immigration Detention Architecture

Even as public opinion turns sharply against ICE, the Trump administration is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to expand the architecture of immigration detention. Two reports this week in Bloomberg and the Washington Post detail how the federal government is moving forward with plans to purchase up to 23 massive warehouses — many of which were built to serve as e-commerce distribution facilities — to house a total of 80,000 people.

From Hagerstown, Maryland, to Kansas City, Missouri, residents and local officials are resisting, citing potential human rights violations; the pressure these installations would place on water and sewer supplies; and the proximity of some warehouses to homes and schools.

The Trump administration’s frantic efforts to detain and deport immigrants have already proven deadly. Thirty-two people died while in ICE custody in 2025, according to the Guardian, “making it the deadliest year the agency has seen in more than two decades.” Eight more people have died in ICE dealings in the first month of 2026 alone.

People detained in ICE detention centers experienced medical neglect, insufficient food and water, and cramped and uncomfortable conditions. Last weekend, immigrant families at the Dilley, Texas, detention center held a protest to demand the release of immigrant children, including 5-year-old Liam Ramos, who was detained in Minneapolis after returning from preschool.
Although more Americans now support abolishing ICE than oppose it, the Trump administration is trying to consolidate the agency’s presence in our communities.

—Allegra Kirkland