The story of Michele Ballarin, the Virginia realtor and Somali pirate hostage negotiator with ties to MAGAland’s bonkers “ItalyGate” conspiracy theory, just got even more bizarre somehow.
The Washington Post reports that the nearly $30 million mansion in Warrenton, Virginia that Ballarin claims belongs to her, uh, doesn’t.
The property is owned by a company of a deceased financier, David B. Ford, and his widow told the Post that she has no idea who Ballarin is.
“She’s in my house,” the widow said when the Post showed her a video of the realtor giving a televised tour of the 22-bedroom mansion with an Icelandic TV crew in November. “How is she in my house?”
In the interview that accompanied the tour, Ballarin insisted that the property belonged to her even though, as the interviewer pointed out, there aren’t any personal items that would indicate she actually lives there.
“I didn’t take you to every corner,” she told the reporter.
The mansion is still listed for sale as of Monday.
TPM’s report on ItalyGate, the absurd conspiracy theory that Italian operatives used satellites to switch votes for Donald Trump for Joe Biden in a plot to rig the 2020 election, details how the two firms run by Ballarin, the Institute for Good Governance and USAerospace Partners, were involved with pushing the conspiracy theory that eventually reached Trump’s then-chief of staff, Mark Meadows.
Meadows would go on to ask top DOJ officials to investigate the conspiracy theory as Trump and his allies attempted to delegitimize the election with lies about voter fraud.
