Cleta Mitchell

Cleta B. Deatherage Mitchell ( Deatherage; born September 16, 1950) is an American lawyer, former politician, and Republican elections activist. Elected in 1976, Mitchell served in the Oklahoma House of Representatives until 1984, representing District 44 as a member of the Democratic Party. In 1996, she registered as a Republican. Since then, she has worked as a Republican lawyer and activist focused on elections, asserting, without evidence, that Democrats win elections only by cheating.

After Democratic candidate Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, Mitchell aided Donald Trump in his efforts to overturn the election results and pressure election officials to "find" sufficient votes for him to win. After participating in a telephone call in which Trump pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to alter the election results in Georgia (which was won by Biden), Mitchell resigned as a partner at Foley & Lardner. In 2021, she set up an escrow fund to funnel money to companies conducting a pro-Trump "audit" into Arizona's 2020 election. Since then, she has pushed for election law changes in Georgia that would hinder quick reporting of election results and make it easier to delay certification of election results.

Early life and education

Cleta Mitchell was born as Cleta Deatherage on September 16, 1950, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. She attended Classen High School her junior and senior year. In 1971, Mitchell was one of the five original conveners of the Oklahoma Women's Political Caucus. She received a B.A. in 1973 and a J.D. in 1975, both from the University of Oklahoma.

As a student she was a proponent of the women's rights movement and campaigned for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment and for legal recognition–then denied in Oklahoma–of a homemaker's contribution to the value of a married couple's estate. She considered US Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine her role model.

Oklahoma House of Representatives Mitchell served as a member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives from 1976 to 1984, as member of the Democratic Party. In her second term, Mitchell was the first woman to chair the Oklahoma House Appropriations and Budget Committee.

In 1996, Mitchell switched her political affiliation from Democratic to independent, and then to Republican. At some point in the 1990s she rescinded her support for the Equal Rights Amendment and praised its failure to pass.

Mitchell represented Donald Trump in 2011, defending him against accusations that he had violated federal election laws in an exploratory campaign for president. She testified before Congress in 2014, asserting that "the commissioner of the IRS lied to Congress". In 2019, she represented Stephen Bannon's nonprofit, Citizens of the American Republic.

She is on the boards of numerous conservative organizations, including the Bradley Foundation which has given $6.5 million to Project Veritas, the National Rifle Association (NRA) (where she has also been a lawyer), and the Republican National Lawyers Association, of which she is a former president. As a board member of the American Conservative Union (ACU), Mitchell played a major role in efforts to expel GOProud (a pro-gay rights Republican group) from the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), a major annual right-wing convention organized by the ACU. She has claimed that Democrats engage in a "very well-planned-out assault" on election systems. Mitchell has worked closely with Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, in the Council for National Policy to organize efforts to keep Trump in power, and The New York Times reported that it was Mitchell who "enlisted John Eastman, the lawyer who crafted specious legal theories claiming Vice President Mike Pence could keep Mr. Trump in power."

After Joe Biden won the 2020 election and President Donald Trump refused to concede, Mitchell claimed that dead people voted in the election.

On January 2, 2021, she participated in the hour-long telephone conversation between Trump and Georgia's Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, during which Trump pressured Raffensperger to investigate unsupported claims disputing the results of the 2020 presidential election based on doctored videos and unsubstantiated rumors from right-wing media. Following that telephone call, Mitchell accused Raffensperger of saying things "that are simply not correct" about the presidential results in Georgia. Two days later, after Mitchell's participation in the call was reported, the law firm of Foley & Lardner (where Mitchell was a partner) released a statement saying that the law firm's policy was not to represent parties seeking to contest the results of the 2020 election; that the firm was "aware of, and concerned by" Mitchell's participation in the telephone call; and that the firm was "working to understand her involvement more thoroughly". Mitchell resigned from Foley & Lardner the next day. The firm said that Mitchell "concluded that her departure was in the firm's best interests, as well as in her own personal best interests". Mitchell blamed her resignation on a purported "massive pressure campaign" allegedly launched by leftist groups on social media.

Voting restrictions campaign In 2021, Michell took a central role in coordinating Republican efforts to tighten voting laws. FreedomWorks put her in charge of a $10 million initiative to push for voting restriction and train conservatives in local elections.

Mitchell also set up an escrow fund to funnel money to companies conducting a pro-Trump "audit" into the 2020 presidential election in Maricopa County, Arizona.

Election Assistance Commission From November 2021 until November 2023, Mitchell served on the Board of Advisors of the federal Election Assistance Commission. The Board meets biannually and has no rule-making authority but can make recommendations to the Commission. She was nominated by Republican-appointed members of the Commission and approved by a majority vote. The EAC certifies voting machines and advises local election officials on compliance with federal regulations.

Election Integrity Network The Conservative Partnership Institute, a right-wing think tank formed by Jim DeMint, helped to create the Election Integrity Network project, an effort spearheaded by Cleta Mitchell beginning in 2021. Both Mitchell and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows are senior members of the Conservative Partnership Institute, which received funding from Trump's Save America PAC.

According to The New York Times, Mitchell is preparing for future elections, and has support from other well-funded right-wing organizations as well, including the Republican National Committee. The Election Integrity Network has held seminars and trainings throughout the country, and is "recruiting election conspiracists into an organized cavalry of activists [who will be] monitoring elections ... She has tapped into a network of grass-root groups" that promote the "big lie" and believe Trump won the 2020 election.

The Election Integrity Network has produced a social media posting guide to advise members, suggesting the use of Facebook, X, Truth Social, Gettr and Rumble.

Podcast and ERIC

Mitchell hosts a podcast called "Who's Counting", and is a major lobbyist against state participation in Electronic Registration Information Center, which allows states to compare voter rolls to prevent double-voting.

Personal life She married Duane Draper, a fellow Oklahoman from Norman, in 1973. In 1980 he took a teaching fellowship at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, moving to Massachusetts. The couple divorced two years later in July 1982 on grounds of "incompatibility".

In 1984, Cleta Deatherage married Dale Mitchell, who was the son of 1940s and 1950s All-Star Cleveland Indians and Brooklyn Dodgers left-fielder (Loren) Dale Mitchell. Her husband's conviction on one count was reversed on appeal and the amount of restitution was reduced. As a consequence of findings of the prosecutors' investigation, he had agreed in 1988 to self-removal from banking.

Selected publications

The Lobbying Compliance Handbook (2008, Columbia Books)