Arianna Meloni in the crosshairs of the magistrates? FdI rises up, Renzi’s response –

“They want to investigate Arianna Meloni”. The editorial on today’s front page of Il Giornale by director Alessandro Sallusti has unleashed a storm. In the editorial, Sallusti evokes the “Palamara method” and explains that the prime minister’s sister Giorgia Meloni could be investigated for “illicit influence peddling”. “Objectively disproportionate attention”, a “chiselled work, every day a piece – sometimes packaged as a behind-the-scenes story, other times as an indiscretion, still others as sources who ask to remain anonymous” to tell “an Arianna Meloni busy making and unmaking the most delicate state appointments, placing friends left and right”, we read in the article that cites the statements of Raffaella Paita of Italia Viva on the eve of the election (“Arianna Meloni was in the newspaper yesterday for her influence on RAI appointments, today for the State Railways. At this point I ask myself: couldn’t they directly make her minister for the implementation of the Program? Parentocracy”). Sallusti states that these words suggest “that there is indeed a hidden maneuver underway, a field in which Matteo Renzi has always excelled”. “There is something more murky, that is, that one writes with morbid insistence not to tell the facts, but to try to determine one. In other words, and without beating around the bush, to prepare the ground to bring the judiciary to investigate Arianna Meloni”, writes the director.

FdI stands firm and protests against what Sallusti denounced: “Today Il Giornale opens with a very worrying background story for democracy: ‘They want to investigate Arianna Meloni’. Be careful, Arianna has done nothing wrong. If she had committed some crime, it would be right to investigate and verify, but Arianna’s only fault is that of being Giorgia’s sister. Since the beginning of the government experience, left-wing newspapers and political groups have started to describe Arianna as the great manipulator of government appointments, but Arianna does not deal with appointments. We have said it and repeated it in every possible circumstance”, declared the deputy and organization manager of Fratelli d’Italia, Giovanni Donzelli, in a video on Facebook. “Sallusti with his background puts all the pieces in order and reveals, according to the Palamara system, why they are putting together this circus on Arianna Meloni. Behind all this there could be an attempt to pollute democracy, to influence, weaken and blackmail the Meloni government through this low and surreal blow to Arianna. A conspiracy of journalists, left-wing politicians and compliant magistrates to create a political event. Attention, not to ascertain a hypothetical crime”, he added.

“Director Sallusti, in his article today, gives a precise reading of the morbid and unjustified attention that some newspapers and a part of the opposition reserve for Arianna Meloni. A shameful and no longer tolerable combination, used to draw the attention of the judiciary to Arianna, with the obvious aim of attacking – on the basis of totally invented facts – a government legitimately elected by the citizens. The opposition should save themselves the trouble of accusing us – just a scheme dear to them – of victimism and persecution mania”, declares Tommaso Foti, group leader of Fratelli d’Italia in the Chamber of Deputies. “The obsessive, compulsive and pathological attacks on Arianna Meloni confirm that a real siege is underway against her, despite the fact that she has punctually denied all the imaginative reconstructions of her actions that a brazen media action, supported by a sneaky political action, continues to represent”, continues the FdI representative.

Called into question, Matteo Renzi responded with a long post on X. “Do the Meloni sisters see ghosts? On this Sunday in August we have to respond to the aggressions of the Brothers of Italy and the conspiracy anxieties of the prime minister’s family”, writes the leader of Italia Viva. “The director of ‘Il Giornale’, Sallusti, hypothesizes a conspiracy: ‘They want to investigate Arianna Meloni’. In short: the judiciary, a part of the newspapers and Italia Viva have agreed to organize a conspiracy and investigate Arianna for influence peddling. Can you imagine? I – continues the former prime minister – organize plots together with the judges (me!) so that a notice of investigation reaches one of the prime minister’s sisters! And obviously since this morning those of the Brothers of Italy have been relaunching the news, starting with the coordinator Donzelli: a clear sign that it is a communication strategy prepared at the table”. “One of two things. Either the Meloni sisters know something that we don’t and then this statement serves to open a preventive controversy that we will understand in the coming months or Giorgia’s August in Puglia didn’t go very well and some panzerotto went down the wrong way: there is too much nervousness within Fratelli d’Italia”.