Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s attorney, repeated the president’s bogus claims of election fraud in the days and weeks after the 2020 Presidential Election on November 3 – as election recount after recount revealed that the only thing fraudulent about the election was the claims that there was election fraud.
U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr told the Associated Press that he had “not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”
Giuliani kept digging and digging and digging to find someone – anyone, anyone, anyone — who could corroborate the Trump World’s accusation that there was widespread election fraud.
Giuliani found Melissa Carone, who worked as an IT contractor with Dominion Voting Services, which produces and sells the voting machines used in the election.
Carone alleged in a November 10 affidavit that was filed in a Wayne County in Detroit that, according to Politico, “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.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/21/trump-mellissa-carone-second-act-00010405
Guiliani brought Carone to Fox Business on November 11 to tell her story to Lou Dobbs of how what she saw on election night convinced her that Dominion Voting Services had conspired to fix the election.
But her account of ballots being smuggled into a Detroit vote-counting center in vans that were supposed to be bringing food for election workers was so gobsmacking in its dishonesty and its incoherence that Dobbs, a right-wing conspiracy theorist, could only shake his head in wonder and say, “it’s clear you witnessed some highly irregular activities.”
So did anyone watching Dobbs interview Carone.
The Wayne County judge dismissed Carone’s allegations as “simply not credible.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/12/03/melissa-carone-michigan-trump-giuliani-election/
But Giuliani soldiered on – perhaps thinking that having a witness who was “not credible” was better than not having any witnesses at all.
This appeared to be a baffling bit of legal strategy coming from someone who had once been a district attorney in New York City.
But I digress.
Giuliani brought Carone to a hearing at the state Legislature when Matt Hall, the chair of the Michigan House Oversight committee, said he asked that Carone speak to the committee in the hope of “clarity and transparency.”
But neither clarity nor transparency was any match for Carone or Giuliani — or Giuliani’s flatulence.
On any other day the fact that Rudy Giuliani farted loudly – and then farted loudly a second time — would have been cause for attention.
But on this day, the farts provided the only appropriate soundtrack for Carone’s testimony.
Carone insisted without proof that tens of thousands of votes had been counted twice.
She claimed that a poll book, the register that chronicles the names of everyone who voted, was “off by 30 thousand.”
When told that this wasn’t correct, she snapped: “Did you take it and do something crazy to it?”
When she was questioned another one of her claims, she loudly responded:
“I know what I saw. And I signed something saying if I’m wrong, I can go to prison,” and then paused added add, “Did you?”
Slate responded by saying that the hearing was designed to reveal Trump World’s lies about election fraud. Instead, Slate said, “the event was so detached from reality that Rudy Giuliani was not the most embarrassing thing about it — despite the fact that he audibly farted mid-presentation.
(In fairness to Giuliani, he farted twice).
“The breakout star of the hearing was Melissa Carone, a contract IT worker whose combination of incoherence and flamboyant hostility made for terrible democracy but terrific television,” Slate reported. “Carone provided Americans yet another opportunity to demonstrate that we’d learned a lesson from four years of Donald Trump about the limits of satire and the danger of elevating cranks to the national stage. Unfortunately, Carone’s appearance set powerful and inexorable historical forces into motion, mostly on Twitter.”
The clip of Carone’s exchange with the legislator went viral and was viewed about nine million times in the next few days.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/12/melissa-carone-michigan-testimony-not-funny.html
Carone’s exchange with legislators provided what Vox said captured “the sputtering, slapdash and conspiracy theory-driven nature of Trump World’s flailing attempts to discredit and overturn the results of the 2020 election.”
Carone’s “Midwestern lilt and poofy, blond updo drew comparisons to Saturday Night Live characters,” the Washington Post reported.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/12/03/melissa-carone-michigan-trump-giuliani-election/
Carone then provided a case of Saturday Night Live imitating life imitating Saturday Night Live.
SNL cast member Cecily Strong portrayed Carone saying: “I personally saw hundreds if not thousands of dead people vote. I am not lying. I signed an After David.”
Dominion Voting Services sent Carone a cease-and-desist letter.
“You gained international infamy earlier this month as Rudy Giuliani’s so-called ‘star witness’ who could supposedly corroborate outlandish accusations that Dominion has somehow rigged or otherwise improperly influenced the outcome of the Nov. 2020 U.S. presidential election,” the letter said.
“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,” the letter continued. “You published these statements even though you knew all along that your attacks on Dominion have no basis in reality.
“We write to you now because you have positioned yourself as a prominent leader of the ongoing misinformation campaign by pretending to have some sort of ‘insider’s knowledge’ regarding Dominion’s business activities, when in reality you were hired through a staffing agency for one day to clean glass on machines and complete other menial tasks,” the letter continued.
Carone soon learned of the downsides to achieving international embarrassment.
The news media reported that Carone had been charged with obscenity after sending her then-boyfriend’s ex-wife lurid video of Carone and her boyfriend having sex between November 2018 and September 2019.
She was sentenced to one year’s probation.
The probation period had expired when she began alleging election fraud.
Carone told Michigan lawmakers that she had “two degrees” – though, in her defense, she did not say she had academic degrees.
According to her LinkedIn page, one of her degrees was from the University of Michigan at Dearborn. But officials at that university said they had no record of anyone with her name being enrolled at the school.
When Carone was asked about the discrepancy, she said, “I do not have a bachelor’s degree. . . . I am about four classes away from it.”
She declined to name the school, saying, “I don’t want them to get harassed.”
In February 2022, Carone decided to capitalize on her fame among election deniers by running for the Michigan state Legislature. Politico reported that she was endorsed by Giuliani and the My Pillow Guy Mike Lindell.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/21/trump-mellissa-carone-second-act-00010405
But the Michigan Department of State disqualified Carone because Carone “had made false statements on an affidavit that candidates were required to submit to election administrators,” the New York Times reported.
She accused Republican election officials and the party’s leaders of conspiring to keep her off the ballot.
“This is how our elected officials keep good candidates from getting elected,” Ms. Carone said. “I’m going to fight it. Even if I don’t end up on the ballot, my voice will be heard. I’m not going anywhere.”
What a reassuring thought.
