Michele Roosevelt Edwards
Michele Roosevelt Edwards (Michele Ballarin before 2020, previously Michele Lynn Golden and Michele Lynn Golden-Ballarin) is a businesswoman and Republican political candidate, known for her claims to have been in negotiation with pirates in Somalia, her attempts to revive the defunct Icelandic airline Wow Air, and her role in promoting the Italygate conspiracy theory. Personal life and education Edwards attended West Virginia University. While a student there, she met a real estate developer 35 years her senior named Edward Golden, whom she soon married. Their son was born in 1981, when Ballarin was 26 years old. In the 1990s she was a single mother and working as an executive assistant for an orthodontist. After Golden's death, she married Iginio Ballarin, described by The Washington Post in 2013 as "a long-time maitre d’ at the 21 Club in New York." She and Ballarin owned an estate in Markham, Virginia named Wolf's Crag, once owned by Confederate officer Turner Ashby. In 1997, Washington, DC's Social Register listed the couple as prominent members of the party circuit. Michele Ballarin became an investment advisor, acquiring several wealthy clients. In 2020 Edwards gave a video interview in a mansion called North Wales. Edwards told interviewers