Dominion Sends Cease-and-Desist To Election Fraud Witness

Mellissa Carone, the Michigan woman whose animated testimony alleging election fraud was widely viewed online and led to a satirical portrayal on “Saturday Night Live,” has been sent a cease-and-desist letter by Dominion Voting Systems. 

Sitting alongside Trump campaign attorney Rudy Giuliani at a Michigan legislative hearing on Dec. 2, Carone, who was contracted by Dominion to work Election Day, alleged that tens of thousands of votes had been counted twice. In an earlier affidavit, she claimed ballots were smuggled into a Detroit vote-counting center in vans masquerading as vehicles carrying meals for election workers. She alleged that Dominion was in on the fraud.

In dismissing a lawsuit, Wayne County judge called Carone’s allegations “simply not credible.”

Dominion, which supplies voting technology to jurisdictions in 28 states, last week sent a strongly worded letter to Carone demanding that she stop making such accusations and warning that “Litigation regarding these incidents is imminent.”

“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,” wrote Thomas Clare and Megan Meier, the attorneys representing Dominion.

“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.

Dominion’s attorneys also instructed Carone to preserve all communication she has had with the Trump campaign or anyone else who had any involvement with her public statements.

Carone told the Detroit News she is “not concerned” about the letter and that Dominion is “scared of me.” She also called the lawyers’ characterization of her work for Dominion as “degrading,” saying she was hired to work in information technology at the TCF Center, not to clean glass on machines.

The Trump campaign has not responded to a request for comment from Spectrum News.

In her testimony before the Michigan House of Representatives, Carone repeatedly cut off Republican Rep. Steve Johnson while he was asking a question after he noted that the poll books did not support her claims, she said: “What’d you guys do, take it and do something crazy to it?” 

“I know what I saw,” Carone told Johnson. “And I signed something saying if I’m wrong, I can go to prison. Did you?”

At one point, Giuliani appeared to shush Carone.

Joe Biden won Michigan by more than 150,000 votes, but President Donald Trump still claims widespread election fraud cost him the election. The Trump campaign has lost dozens of lawsuits seeking to toss votes out in battleground states largely due to lack of evidence. 

Dominion has sent more than 20 letters demanding retractions and threatening defamation lawsuits against individuals and media entities that have accused the company of participating in a conspiracy to steal the presidential election. Among those receiving letters were Giuliani; Trump-aligned attorneys Sidney Powell and Lin Wood; Fox News and network personalities Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity and Maria Bartiromo; Newsmax; One America News Network; and conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh.

Fox News and Newsmax have since aired corrections and clarifications about Dominion and Smartmatic, a competing company also at the center of baseless fraud accusations that has threatened legal action against the two conservative networks as well as OAN.

Dominion has pushed back on the many baseless claims levied against it, which include that it has ownership ties to governments of China, Cuba, or Venezuela and that its machines were programmed with an algorithm to shift fractions of votes from Trump to Biden.

John Poulos, the company’s CEO, told Michigan lawmakers earlier this month: “The disinformation campaign being waged against Dominion defies facts or logic. To date, no one has produced credible evidence of vote fraud or vote switching on Dominion systems because these things simply have not occurred.”

Separately, Dominion’s security director Eric Coomer, who was driven into hiding by death threats, filed a defamation lawsuit last week against President Trump’s campaign, two of its lawyers, and some conservative media figures and outlets.

“I have been thrust into the public spotlight by people with political and financial agendas but, at heart, I am a private person,” Coomer said in a statement.

His lawsuit, filed in district court in Denver County, Colorado, names the Trump campaign, lawyers Giuliani and Powell, conservative columnist Michelle Malkin, the website Gateway Pundit, Colorado conservative activist Joseph Oltmann, and conservative media Newsmax, and One America News Network.

“While I intend to do everything I can to recapture my prior lifestyle, I have few illusions in this regard,” he said. “And so, today, I put my trust in the legal process, which has already exposed the truth of the 2020 presidential election.”

There was no immediate comment from those named in the lawsuit.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

*** This article has been archived for your research. The original version from Bay News 9 can be found here ***