American ideologist of the resurrection of Icelandic low-cost WOW air Michele Edwards Balarin became an actor in the conspiracy theory of fraud during the presidential elections in the US in 2020. According to The Washington Post investigation, when candidate Donald Trump was looking for possible pieces of evidence of fraud during the presidential elections in December 2020, White House high officials got an email, which explained the outcome of voting by the intervention of an Italian defence contractor. This conspiracy theory was later named “Italygate”.
According to the email, a military company from Italy together with the CIA, using satellites, somehow intercepted votes for Donald Trump and redirected them in favour of Joe Biden. The message was printed on the paper with the letterhead of USAerospace Partners, Michele Edwards Balarin’s company, which bought assets of Icelandic low-cost WOW air, collapsed in 2019. Balarin’s Institute for Good Governance later published a document from Italy, in which some Italian hacker admitted the intervention in the US presidential elections.
As journalists revealed, this Institute for Good Governance registered its headquarters in the historical North Wales Farm, a 22-bedroom mansion in Warrenton, state Virginia. The mansion was the place, where Michele Balarin received the group from Icelandic television channel RÚV last year. The journalists Ingólfur Bjarni Sigfússon and Ingvar Haukur Guðmundsson asked her regarding the plans of launch WOW air flights. At that time Ballarin struggled to present any proofs of the airline’s activity, only promised the beginning of flights in 2021. During the interview she showed the house to Icelandic journalists, naming the property as hers.
However, as The Washington Post investigation revealed, the house was and still is stated for a sale. The real owners of the mansion said they do not know Michele Ballarin.
Also, the investigation emphasized several pivotal moments in Ballarin’s career. One of them was when about 20 years ago she claimed to bring more stability to the Somalia region. In 2009, the Somali president even named her “presidential advisor for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance.” She positioned herself as a negotiator for release hostages, captured by Somalian pirates. However, as WikiLeaks posted part of the US diplomatic post in 2009, the Ukrainian foreign minister complained to U.S. officials that Ballarin was hindering efforts to negotiate with Somali pirates who had captured a ship and its crew.
