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- A key witness from a Michigan election-fraud hearing last year, is running for state office.
- Mellissa Carone went viral in December after her bizarre testimony on alleged voting fraud in Detroit.
- The Republican said she’s running her campaign on “election integrity.”
- Visit the Business section of Insider for more stories.
The woman who made headlines late last year for her outlandish testimony as Rudy Giuliani’s “star” witness during a Michigan election-fraud hearing on the presidential election is joining the political fray herself.
Mellissa Carone, who went viral following her eccentric performance at the Michigan House Oversight Committee in December, is running for a seat in the Michigan State House, according to a local Fox affiliate.
Carone is running as a Republican in a Detroit-area district that has been a GOP-stronghold since the 1990s, the outlet reported.
According to The Detroit News, the Oakland County District seat Carone is running for will be open in 2022, as the current representative will be unable to run for reelection because of term limits.
Carone told the newspaper that she is “running on election integrity,” and criticized Democratic leadership in the state, saying Michigan needed a return to “conservative values.”
Carone officially formed a committee for her campaign last week, according to state records.
The 33-year-old was parodied on “Saturday Night Live” by Cecily Strong after she made false claims about election fraud at a Detroit ballot counting center where she worked as a Dominion Voting Systems IT contractor.
She erroneously claimed that voter turnout in Detroit was over 120%, and when a Republican lawmaker questioned how there could be massive fraud when there was no discrepancy between ballot count totals and tracked votes, Carone questioned whether lawmakers “did something crazy” to the poll book totals.
Lawyers for Dominion hit Carone with a cease-and-desist order following her baseless claims, accusing the mother of two of spreading lies about the company.
Trump supporters positioned Carone as an insider whose key testimony could potentially help discredit President Joe Biden’s win over the former president. But a letter sent to Carone from Dominion said in reality, Carone was “hired through a staffing agency for one day to clean glass on machines and complete other menial tasks.”
Following her moment in the spotlight, reports revealed she was on probation for sending her fiance’s ex-wife sex tapes. Police records said Carone harassed the woman for two years, stalking her and sending her explicit videos from an anonymous account.
Carone told the Huffington Post that it was her fiance who had sent the tapes and that she agreed to a plea deal so they wouldn’t have to continue with court proceedings.
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