The star witness in Trump’s ‘voter fraud’ case in Michigan was recently released from probation after being accused of sending her fiance’s ex-wife pornographic videos and then attempting to frame her for stealing them, according to reports.
Mellissa Carone, 33, was sentenced to 12 months probation for the offense in Wayne County, Michigan, in September 2019.
The mother-of-two, then Mellissa Wright, reportedly harassed the 42-year-old victim for a period of two years, stalking her and sending her explicit videos from an anonymous account of herself having sex with her partner, the victim’s ex-husband.
Investigators managed to trace the emails’ IP address back to Carone and she later admitted to investigators that she was the person responsible for sending them, according to documents obtained by Deadline Detroit.
As exclusively reported by DailyMail.com last week, Carone was initially charged with obscenity and computer crimes, but the charges were later reduced to a misdemeanor disorderly conduct charge as part of a plea deal with prosecutors.
Her probation ended on September 13, just weeks before Election Day, when a temporary staffing agency hired Carone to assist Dominion Voting Systems in Detroit.
Mellissa Carone, 33, was sentenced to 12 months of probation in September 2019 after admitting to harassing and sending explicit videos to her fiance's ex-wife
Carone became a viral sensation when she appeared at a hearing of the Michigan House Oversight Committee last week, in which she delivered bizarre testimony about claims of widespread election fraud
Carone claimed that it was actually her fiance, Matthew Stackpoole (above), who sent the explicit videos to his ex-wife and that she took a plea deal only because they didn’t want to spend any more time in court
The mother-of-two had struck a plea deal with Michigan prosecutors, who in turn dropped a first degree obscenity charge against her
The mother-of-two became a viral phenomenon during a hearing on Wednesday where she gave belligerent, bizarre and widely discredited testimony detailing her claims of election fraud, in which also she stated, 'Democrats ruin your life.'
In an interview with the Huffington Post on Saturday, Carone claimed that it was actually her fiance, Matthew Stackpoole, who sent the explicit videos to his ex-wife and that she took a plea deal only because the couple 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, a self-proclaimed cybersecurity analyst, said. ‘I just said screw it, I’m going to have to take it.’
Carone also revealed that she had initially told police that she believed her fiance’s ex-wife had unlawfully obtained the videos, but argued that she hadn’t made a false statement at the time as she honestly believed that was the case.
‘I didn’t make a false accusation. That is what I thought at the time. That is what I assumed to be the truth at the time,’ she told HuffPost. ‘He had not yet came out and told me that he had sent it.’
In a texted statement, Stackpoole reportedly backed up Carone’s story, insisting he was the one who sent the explicit videos to his ex-wife.
Police records show that he told police at the time that ‘he is not sure how someone would get sexual videos of him and his girlfriend’ and that he believed his ex-wife ‘somehow was able to access his Google account to view his pictures and videos that he had stored on his Google account.’
The victim said the false claim spurred a police investigation that cost her a lot of money. She said she eventually took a lie detector test to prove she hadn’t unlawfully hacked her former husband’s account.
Carone then later confessed to investigators that she had sent the videos, saying that her goal was to send Stackpoole’s ex-wife ‘over the top’.
She also admitted to asking her boyfriend to help cover her tracks by getting a new WiFi router and internet provider.
In an interview this week, Stackpoole backed up Carone’s story, insisting he was the one who sent the explicit videos to his ex-wife.
Carone claimed during last week's hearing that while working as a contractor, workers were shuttled to a facility called the 'Chicago warehouse' where she witnessed a majority of the alleged fraud
After serving her one year probation order, Carone was contracted by Dominion to work at a Detroit polling station throughout the presidential election to undertake IT work. It’s in this position that she claims to have witnessed widespread voting fraud.
She later appeared on Fox Business’ Lou Dobbs Tonight segment to float a conspiracy theory that vans of food for election workers may have secretly been filled with ballots. Rudy Giuliani later repeated her claims on Fox in the weeks after.
Carone then appeared as a witness for the Trump campaign at a hearing of the Michigan House Oversight Committee on Tuesday, where Giuliani is challenging Biden’s victory.
Her sweeping and baffling sermon went viral last week, in which she made a number of noncredible accusations of mass criminality at the polling center.
‘Everything that happened at that TCF Center was fraud,’ Carone claimed at one point. ‘Every single thing.’
Giuliani even tried to shush her at one point, as she asserted: 'I know what I saw. I know what I saw. If I'm wrong I can go to prison.'
On Thursday, she lashed out at suggestions she had been drinking after her belligerent performance, proclaiming: 'Absolutely not!'
The same day - having claimed that she had to 'get rid of her social media' - she went on Twitter to post pictures of herself with Giuliani and a mash-up of her evidence which compared her to 'Rocky.' The mash-up mocked a Republican lawmaker then showed Trump's Marine One over a rally crowd.
And late in the afternoon, Trump approvingly tweeted a link to a story by pro-Trump outlet Justthenews.com featuring her testimony.
Carone's criminal past is the latest public blunder for Giuliani as he attempts to prove alleged election fraud, just weeks after he held a press conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping - which was in-between a sex shop and a crematorium.
The 76-year-old also became a meme himself during a bizarre press conference last month where he was sweating profusely and hair dye leaked down the side of his face.
On the internet Carone had featured in other mash-ups comparing her to SNL's Cecily Strong's Girl You Wish You Hadn't Started a Conversation With character.
Carone had told the Michigan House Oversight Committee hearing on Wednesday about her claims that she saw poll workers running ballots through voting machines 'thousands of times,' which a judge had already said was 'not credible.'
Carone said she was working as a contractor for Dominion Voting System at the Detroit TCF Center.
Carone claimed during the hearing that while working as a contractor, workers were shuttled to a facility called the 'Chicago warehouse' where she witnessed a majority of the alleged fraud.
'I know for a fact that there was illegal activity going on there,' Carone declared at the hearing, claiming that people had 'pictures' of boxes being carried out of the warehouse. Neither she nor Giuliani and Janet Ellis - Trump's other personal attorney - produced any during the hearing.
At one point during the hearing, Republican state representative Steve Johnson said she should be testifying under oath.
But in response, the 33-year-old said she 'had an affidavit.'
'I am a mother, I have two children, I have two degrees. I don't know any woman in the world that would write an affidavit under oath just to write it. You can go to prison for this,' she said.
She also repeatedly spoke over the lawmaker, raising her voice, at which point Giuliani was seen leaning over and appearing to 'shush' her.
Carone is a dedicated Trump supporter, who has posted her support for him on social media for months, called Joe Biden 'literally mental' and demanded the recall of Democratic Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer
Among her claims was that the poll book - the register of those who had voted - was 'off by 30,000.'
'We're not seeing the poll book off by 30,000,' he said.
'Did you take it and do something crazy to it?' she replied.
'I'm just saying the numbers are not off by 30,000,' Johnson said.
'I know what I saw. I know what I saw and I signed something that said if I'm wrong I can go to prison. Did you?'
Even when the chair told her to answer without interrupting she couldn't help herself.
'It's wildly off and dead people voted and illegals voted,' she said over his question.
Carone's affidavit was included in the Michigan lawsuit that the Trump team filed in hopes of stopping the election certification of Wayne County.
Not only was the request denied by a judge, but the same judge said that Carone's allegations were 'simply not credible.'
When a Democratic lawmaker told her that the Michigan state judge had ruled that her evidence 'did not square with any other affidavits' she said: 'Guess what, there's gonna be a couple behind me that will say the same thing I just said.' There were not.
'Sir, I wrote a written affidavit, yes, it is 100 per cent true.'
Carone is a dedicated Trump supporter, who has posted her support for him on social media for months, called Joe Biden 'literally mental' and demanded the recall of Democratic Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer.
She lives with Stackpoole, 36, in a Wayne County suburb of Michigan, and posted pictures showing her house with Trump-Pence signs. The couple have a five-month-old daughter together, while she has a three-year-old son from a previous relationship.
She has a bachelor's degree from the ITT Technical Institute in Dearborn and an associate's degree in IT from the University of Michigan at Dearborn. Both periods of study were combined with working in low-level IT jobs.
She claimed in testimony that she was unable to get work in the wake of making her claims about election fraud.
'My life has been destroyed,' she said. 'I've lost family, I've lost friends. I've had to change my phone number. I've had to get rid of social media.
'I can't even get an actual job anymore because Democrats like to ruin their lives, that's why, like they did to Trump.'
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