Cleta Mitchell
The legislature has the authority to choose the electors. And they don’t have to ask anybody’s position, in my view. Cleta Mitchell’s testimony to the Select Committee’s Investigation into January 6th
Cleta Mitchell is a lawyer who aided Trump’s efforts to try to overturn the 2020 election results and has been working on efforts that could disrupt the 2024 election. Mitchell, a Project 2025 contributor, runs the Election Integrity Network, which, per Center for Media and Democracy, trains right-wing poll watchers as part of an effort to “create enough disputes to justify intervention in the election by Republican-controlled state legislatures.” She is also Board Chair of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, which backs groups accused of intimidating voters and has sought to limit mail-in voting.
Mitchell gained particular notoriety after reports revealing she was on the phone with Trump when he pressured Georgia’s top election official to “find” 11,780 votes to overturn Georgia’s election. In September 2023, a grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, recommended criminal charges against Mitchell for her role in attempting to overturn the election results, but she and a few others were not indicted by the District Attorney. Mitchell also worked behind the scenes with John Eastman on fringe theories to help Trump to overturn the 2020 presidential election that he lost. Eastman is facing disbarment for his role in trying to subvert the election.
After her role in Trump’s efforts to pressure the Georgia Secretary of State to falsify the election results, Mitchell resigned her partnership with Foley & Lardner. She then joined former Trump administration officials–including former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, senior advisor Stephen Miller, and other election denialists or insurrectionists–at the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI), which is part of Project 2025. CPI is known as the “nerve center for the right wing” and a “breeding ground for the next generation of Trump loyalists and an incubator for policies he might pursue.”
Mitchell runs CPI’s “Election Integrity Network,” which “aims to train conservative poll watchers as part of a broader effort to create enough disputes to justify intervention in the election by Republican-controlled state legislatures.” Mitchell has also outlined her 2024 strategy to reduce college voter turnout and to cut down on vote-by-mail, in a presentation at a GOP donor retreat. Mitchell has also addressed ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and told state legislators: “we’re going to teach you how to gerrymander,” that is to draw distorted congressional and state legislative district maps, and she also urged them to delete their notes from that session.
In 2021, Mitchell was named to the Board of Advisors for the federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC), after being nominated by the Republican-appointed members. Per AP: “the advisory board does not have the ability to directly make policy but can recommend voluntary guidelines to the EAC. The EAC certifies voting systems and advises local election offices on compliance with federal election regulations.” In 2020, Trump had appointed to the commission J. Christian Adams, who is president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a Project 2025 Advisory Board member for which Mitchell chairs its board of directors.
Mitchell has also decried how easy it is for college students to vote, trained election conspiracists to monitor elections, and pushed for the use of AI to prepare lists of “questionable” voter registrations to report to local officials.
Mitchell has deep ties to Leonard Leo, the driving force behind recruiting, appointing, legitimizing, and defending activist judges who are implementing a far-right and anti-abortion agenda. She also helped Ginni Thomas create the Liberty Central group that billionaire Harlan Crow then secretly gave $500,000 as the Supreme Court was considering striking down parts of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA); in a 5-4 decision the Court did strike down parts of BRCA, and Clarence Thomas did not recuse himself despite that secret gift to his wife.
Mitchell was a former board member for the National Rifle Association, and she is a long-time member of the Board of the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, a foundation based in Wisconsin that has given millions to groups that have denied the results of the 2020 presidential election. She also leads the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), a group she helped launch that has backed groups accused of intimidating voters and that backs efforts that make it harder for Americans to vote, including limiting mail-in voting. Notably, PILF has recently argued before the Delaware Supreme Court that early voting and permanent absentee voting violate the state’s constitution.