Mellissa Carone in Lansing
We knew Mellissa Carone, Rudy Giulinani's star witness at a Dec. 2 election hearing in Lansing, wasn't going to quickly fade.
Lawyers for Dominion Voting Systems sent a letter last week demanding she "cease and desist making defamatory claims" about the company's election machines, and preserve records related to her "smear campaign against the company," Craig Mauger of The Detroit News reports.
Carone, a 33-year-old Grosse Pointe Woods mom who worked as a contractor for Dominion at Detroit's TCF Center absentee ballot tabulating center, is among more than a dozen individuals who've made unproven claims of wrongdoing about the election technology business and have received letters that warn them that litigation is "imminent," the paper says.
"Without a shred of corroborating evidence, you have claimed that you witnessed several different versions of voter fraud — ranging from one story involving a van, to other accusations that votes were counted multiple times," Dominion attorneys wrote to Carone. "You published these statements even though you knew all along that your attacks on Dominion have no basis in reality."
Attorneys Thomas Clare and Megan Meier wrote that Carone had positioned herself as "a prominent leader of the ongoing misinformation campaign by pretending to have some sort of 'insider’s knowledge.'" However, the attorneys said she was hired through a staffing agency "for one day to clean glass on machines and complete other menial tasks."
Carone has left an indelible mark. Her performance before a House committee was later mocked on "Saturday Night Live." Her claims, also contained in an affidavit, were dismissed by a local judge as being unfounded.
She spoke Dec. 12 at a pro-Trump rally in Washington, D.C.
Deadline Detroit was first to report that she pleaded guilty after sending multiple videos of her having sex with her boyfriend to his ex-wife.
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