Investigative Reporter: @ProPublica. Also: @NYTMag @GQMagazine @NewYorker. Book: https://nitter.cf/t.co/brMZdDpBU4. Primarily now at: @dougbockclark.bsky.social
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20/ A White House spokesperson didn’t answer specific questions about Mitchell, saying she has no official role in election policy but is an effective private advocate.
22/ Mitchell told ProPublica she and Trump merely wanted to provide GA Secretary of State Raffensperger with evidence not to push him “to take any official action to ‘overturn the election.’”
13/ The investigation is now overseen by Bishop, the U.S. attorney who is Mitchell’s ally and has pushed aggressive actions, such as trying to subpoena personal information for thousands of GA poll workers.
theguardian.com/us-news/2026…
18/ Mitchell declined multiple requests to speak with ProPublica for this article but occasionally answered emails.
“You’re my opponent,” she wrote. “You’re never going to write in any objective, non-judgmental way about the election integrity movement.”
17/ This is part of a lifelong pattern of her escalating conflicts into winner-take-all battles, according to those who’ve known her for years and even decades.
Only now, what’s at stake is the future of American elections.
16/ And as the midterms approach, she has been pushing for the administration to take ever more extreme actions, most recently to exert unprecedented powers over voting machines.
rumble.com/v7ggxi8-cleta-mit…
15/ But despite the checks to her agenda, friends and enemies alike say she’s relentless:
“Even if she fails, she always finds another point of attack,” said Max Flugrath, a director at the voting advocacy group Fair Fight. “She’s relentless.”
14/ Not everything that Mitchell champions is a success–the SAVE America Act, for example, has been blocked by moderate GOP senators.
wcnc.com/article/news/politi…
11/ In the years after 2020, EIN participants pushed numerous claims of election fraud to the GA state election board, which investigators largely debunked.
Once Trump returned to power, however, these discredited claims were used to justify federal action…
12/ After ProPublica and other news orgs sued to unseal the warrant for the raid, it was revealed that the affidavit included material compiled by a researcher with Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network and cited network participants as witnesses.
propublica.org/article/kevin…
9/ Then there’s her Election Integrity Network, an organization she built to rally activists inspired by Trump’s “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen.
The EIN has gone from 7 state chapters in 2022 to at least 26 today, with hundreds of members.
propublica.org/article/big-l…
1/ EXCLUSIVE: As the Trump administration seeks to exert unprecedented control over the midterm elections, one woman has shaped its campaign more than any other: Cleta Mitchell.
This is the story of how she turned Trump’s “Big Lie” into a national movement 🧵
8/ Another close Mitchell ally occupies a top election role at the Justice Department: Dan Bishop, a U.S. Attorney who is leading the department’s reinvestigation of the 2020 election.
nitter.cf/CletaMitchell/status/1…
7/ One of Mitchell’s allies is Heather Honey, who now leads DHS’s elections work.
A high-ranking official knowledgeable about Honey’s hiring said her “sole qualification was who she worked with … She worked with Cleta.” (DHS called this “false.”)
propublica.org/article/heath…
6/ And Mitchell orchestrated the creation of the SAVE America Act, which Trump has repeatedly called his top legislative priority and taken extreme actions to push, such as threatening to abolish the filibuster.
politico.com/live-updates/20…
5/ Mitchell also shaped the 2025 executive order that laid the blueprint for the administration’s current actions, such as its largely futile hunt for noncitizen voters, per sources.
propublica.org/article/nonci…
4/ Mitchell’s influence on the administration stretches from its legislative agenda to shaping a key executive order to getting her allies installed in top administration posts.
At least 25 political appointees have had close ties to her.
3/ Mitchell’s influence comes in two ways.
First, she’s cultivated influence within the administration and Congress.
Second, she’s built a grassroots army of election activists nationwide.
This gives her an inside-outside game to affect elections at multiple levels.
2/ In fact, @ProPublica found that no one besides Trump himself has done more than Cleta Mitchell to turn the mundane processes of how ballots are cast and counted in American elections into mortal combat.
propublica.org/article/cleta…
