Mellissa Carone speaks in front of the Michigan House Oversight Committee in Lansing on Dec. 2.Photo: JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP via Getty
A Michigan womanwho went viral for her supporting roleinDonald Trump’s attempts to have votes overturned in the2020 presidential electionis now launching a campaign of her own.
Still, Carone grabbed the spotlight of social media — and the Trump campaign, who hailed her as something of a key witness — for her unusually chatty and somewhat combative appearance in 2020 in front of Michigan lawmakers.
Carone’s flippant and theatrical demeanor drew millions of views on social media and led to aSaturday Night Liveparody.
Now, the 35-year-old is running for the state legislature,tellingPoliticoin an article published Mondaythat the last presidential elections “pushed me into politics, for sure.”
“To be honest with you, I never thought of running for office … [but] our legislators are doing nothing for us,” she told the outlet. “We hold a Republican majority in Michigan, and you would think it was the opposite.”
Carone hadreportedly workedas a contract IT worker forDominion Voting Systems, a private company which describes itself as a nonpartisan operation that creates software to help local governments run their elections. Dominion is also widely used in battleground states, drawing Trump’s ire.
After he lost his re-election bid to DemocratJoe Biden, Trump contended — without evidence — that the Dominion systems were part of a national conspiracy to flip votes away from him. Carone, he said, had proof.
Shesubmitted an affidavitmaking allegations about what she described as a number of “fraudulent actions” at a large vote-counting center in Detroit.
A judge in the case, however, found affidavits from others at the center, which contradicted Carone, more persuasive: “[Her] allegations simply are not credible,” he ruled.
Other evidence also did not back up Carone or Trump’s claims; in fact, aWashington Postreview of 10 swing states found that counties that used the Dominion machines overwhelmingly voted for Trump.
AsPoliticoreports, lawyers for Dominionlater described Caroneas someone “hired through a staffing agency for one day to clean glass on machines and complete other menial tasks.”
The company also sent her a cease-and-desist letter, in which attorneys said she had “gained international infamy” despite not offering “a shred of corroborating evidence.”
“You published these statements even though you knew all along that your attacks on Dominion have no basis in reality,” attorneys told Carone.
She has also spoken to reporters about her own criminal history. She was previously charged with first-degree obscenity and using a computer to commit a crime, which occurred after she allegedly sent explicit videos of herself and her fiancé to her fiancé’s ex-wife amid what the Huffington Post’s reporting described as years of bad blood between the three.
She pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of disorderly conduct and completed 12 months of probation, previously telling thePostearlier that reports about her past were meant to “[divert] attention from election fraud to something completely different.”
Speaking toPoliticoabout her new campaign this week, Carone said she “never wanted to be thrown out into the public eye the way I was.”
“But you know, sometimes you have to do things that make you uncomfortable to make a change,” she told the outlet. “And that’s what I’ve done.”
source: people.com
