This Michigan Republican and Giuliani 'star witness' promoted Trump’s voter fraud lies — now she’s running for office

In December 2020, MAGA Republican Mellissa Carone was attorney Rudy Giuliani’s “star witness” at a Michigan State House Oversight Committee hearing — where she claimed, with zero proof, that Michigan had been stolen from then-President Donald Trump in the 2020 election. Now, in the 2022 midterms, Carone is running for a seat in the Michigan State Legislature — and she is still promoting the Big Lie.

Journalist Brittany Gibson, in an article published by Politico on February 21, explains, “Carone is one of a large cohort of pro-Trump Republican conspiracy theorists and election deniers running for public office this fall in Michigan, where his baseless claims about a stolen election continue to roil the political landscape. Among those candidates, Carone might be the best known nationally.”

Giuliani was one of Trump’s top attorneys during and after the 2020 election — and the former New York City mayor claimed, in December 2020, that Carone’s testimony would prove that Trump really won Michigan. But she never offered any proof of her over-the-top claims, and election recounts left no doubt that Biden won the state fairly.

Gibson notes, “In an affidavit from November 10, 2020 — six days after the AP called Michigan for Joe Biden — she alleged that some ballots were counted 4 or 5 times; that more than 100,000 ballots were then ‘found’ after vans dropped off food for the poll workers; that poll workers were filling out ballots on behalf of voters — and that her managers, who were responsible for overseeing the voting site where she was present and submitting the data, were incompetent…. She snapped at lawmakers from both parties and went on a tangent about dead people voting.”

Carone’s unhinged testimony was famously mocked in a “Saturday Night Live” skit, with “SNL” star Cecily Strong playing Carone. Carone claimed that Dominion Voting Systems helped Biden steal the election from Trump in Michigan, and the company sent her a cease-and-desist order.

Some of Trump’s allies have endorsed Carone’s 2022 campaign for a Michigan State Legislature seat, including Giuliani and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell. But Trump himself has yet to endorse her.

So far, no Democrat in Carone’s district has filed to run for that seat. And Mark Brewer, who formerly chaired the Michigan Democracy Party, believes that Carone has a good chance of winning.

“A lot of the Republican base here, particularly in Macomb County, believes Trump should have been elected, the election was stolen, there should be an audit — I mean, the whole story,” Brewer told Politico. “And that’ll be what Carone will play to. A lot of Republican primary voters believe in the Big Lie …. If she gets through a primary, she could win.”