Mellissa Anne Wright (now Carone). Image via the Southgate, Mich. Police Dept.
Rudy Giuliani, the attorney for President Donald Trump who is appealing to Republican legislators in key battleground states to upend the results of the 2020 presidential election, has at times appeared with witnesses of what he and they allege to be various forms of election malfeasance. This week, witness Mellissa Carone went viral after testy exchanges with Michigan lawmakers surrounding her unsworn testimony on things she claimed to witness while working as a temp IT contractor for Dominion Voting Systems in that state. Among her accusations was that her managers were “in on” a scheme of “cheating” in the election; that a “big data loss” occurred during the process of counting ballots; that the count “wasn’t a fair process at all;” that people were not properly trained; and that “vans full of ballots” may have been brought in once Trump surged ahead in the count. (“I didn’t see any ballots being carried out of vans,” she later clarified, though she claimed to “know people who have.”) Carone added that her “life has been completely destroyed because of” her claims of alleged election troubles — including losing “family” and having her kids threatened. It’s all because, in her words, “Democrats like to ruin your lives.”
A judge previously decided Carone’s election accounts were “not credible.”
According to reports by the Daily Mail and Deadline Detroit, Carone’s appearance alongside Giuliani came after she appeared in court to face two criminal charges. The named defendant on court documents referenced in those reports is Mellissa Anne Wright, which the reports say was Carone’s former name. According to case records on file with the 28th Judicial District in Southgate, Mich., which Law&Crime reviewed, the original charges were first-degree obscenity and using a computer to commit a crime. Court records indicate both were misdemeanors. The records say the obscenity count was reduced to a count of disorderly circumstances warranting alarm; the computer crime count was dismissed by the prosecutor.
Among the accusations was that Carone waged “a harassment campaign” against her boyfriend’s ex-wife, Deadline Detroit reported. The ex-wife called police several times, the report says, “after receiving three videos from an unknown email address showing Carone and her ex[-husband] having sex.”
Per the Deadline Detroit report:
Police traced the IP address from the emails to Carone, who initially denied sending them but revealed she was aware of their content. Eventually, she confessed to investigators, saying her goal was to send Jessica “over the top.” She admitted to also asking her boyfriend to cover her tracks by getting a new router and internet provider.
Carone has described herself as a cybersecurity expert, the reports say.
Court records list the first offense date as Nov. 7, 2018. The ultimate punishment was one year of probation, which ended Sept. 13, 2020, the court records say.
Mellissa Carone alongside Rudy Giuliani in Michigan. Photo by JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP via Getty Images.
The story does not end there. Despite entering a plea deal and admitting guilt, Carone said in a Saturday interview with HuffPost that her now-fiancé is the one who sent the raunchy videos. Carone said she took a plea deal because — in HuffPost’s characterization of her words — she “didn’t want to spend any more time in court.”
“The reason I got charged for it is it was sent off of my phone,” Carone said in her own words (according to HuffPost). “I just said ‘screw it,’ I’m going to have to take it.”
Carone’s now-fiancé, Matthew Stackpoole, texted HuffPost “that he sent the videos” and that the police “knew he had done so when officers took Carone’s official confession” (internal punctuation omitted).
At one point, Carone reportedly claimed Stackpoole’s ex-wife had hacked into her phone and stolen the videos. Carone said she made those claims before Stackpoole admitted to her that he had sent the videos to his ex while using Carone’s phone.
Carone told HuffPost she was “100% credible” as to the election and that she had spoken to both Giuliani and Trump about her claims of malfeasance. She then admitted she never spoke to Trump but said Giuliani had done so about her accounts of what happened when she worked for Dominion.