Meet Melissa Carone, Rudy Giuliani's Stunningly Messy Star Witness In Weird, Limp Voter Fraud Case

By Esther Wang  |  December 3, 2020 | 4:15pm
Politics
Meet Melissa Carone, Rudy Giuliani's Stunningly Messy Star Witness In Weird, Limp Voter Fraud Case
Screenshot:Michigan House of Representatives (Fair Use)

For some unfathomable reason, the Michigan House of Representatives decided a good use of their time on Wednesday evening would be to give the mic to Rudy Giuliani and his band of conspiracy theorists to prattle on about election fraud. We’ve all moved on, Rudy! It’s over! It didn’t happen! Give it up!

While the antics were a supreme waste of everyone’s evening, the hours-long meeting of the Michigan House Oversight Committee did give us some incredible moments from a cast of characters that included a star witness, Melissa Carone, an IT contractor for Dominion Voting Systems who claimed in an affidavit to see ballot counting shenanigans with her own eyes on election night in Detroit. (She has parroted those claims in interviews on Fox News.) A judge has already dismissed her claims as “not credible,” but that didn’t stop Carone from strolling up on Wednesday night in sky-high heels and a blonde bouffant and give testimony that became increasingly unhinged.

At one point early on in her testimony, Carone claimed to witness “20 counts of fraud taking place in front of my face, and this isn’t counting the ballots that are found in rivers, the ballots found under rocks,” seemingly seriously referencing the conspiracy theory that ballots cast for Donald Trump were thrown in rivers.

Then Carone apparently decided to say, “Fuck it,” and went truly off the rails, in a rather heated exchange with Michigan State Representative Steven Johnson, a Republican, in which she claimed the poll book numbers, the list of registered voters, was “off by over a 10o,000” when compared with the number of votes cast:

“We’re not seeing the poll book off by 30,000 votes, that’s not the case,” Johnson said at one point.

“What did you guys do, take it and, uh, do something crazy to it?” Carone replied in a drawl.

“I”m just saying, the numbers are not off by 30,000 votes,” Johnson said.

“I know what I saw,” Carone interrupted, with the energy of a belligerent sorority girl who’s had one too many Jack and Cokes, “and I signed something saying if I’m wrong, I could go to prison. Did you?”

Carone was then told to not interrupt Johnson, before she concluded, “It’s wildly off, and dead people voted, and illegals voted, and so that’s my answer.”

According to Carone’s Wednesday night testimony her life has been “destroyed” by speaking out. “My life has been completely destroyed because of this,” Carone said, claiming that she and her family has been threatened and that in addition to having to move, she’s “had to get rid of social media.” (Carone seems to continue to have a Facebook page, where she describes herself as a proud #boymom and #girlmom, as well as a LinkedIn account.)

“I can’t even get an actual job anymore, I can’t,” she said. “Because Democrats like to ruin your lives. That’s why. Just like they do to Trump.”

Melissa, I think you’re doing this all by yourself!

 
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