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It’s funny but it isn’t a joke

The Trump campaign stands by Mellissa Carone's wild accusations. (Photo: JEFF KOWALSKY via Getty Images)
The Trump campaign stands by Mellissa Carone’s wild accusations. (Photo: JEFF KOWALSKY via Getty Images)

And, by the way, the woman at the center of this travesty/joke is an actual criminal:

Donald Trump supporter who gave bizarre and discredited testimony about voter fraud in Detroit was recently released from probation after being accused of sending pornographic videos to her fiance’s ex-wife and framing the woman for stealing them, HuffPost has learned.

Mellissa Carone, a contract information technology worker for a voting systems company, made sweeping allegations about mass voter fraud when she testified in hearings before the Michigan Senate and House last week.

She was previously charged under the name Mellissa Wright with first degree obscenity and using a computer to commit a crime. Under a plea agreement, she reduced her charge to disorderly conduct and received 12 months of probation, a spokeswoman for the Wayne County, Michigan, prosecutor’s office told HuffPost. Her probation ended on Sept. 13, just weeks before Election Day, when a temporary staffing agency employed Carone to assist Dominion Voting Systems in Detroit.

But Carone, in an interview with HuffPost on Saturday, 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 they didn’t want to spend any more time in court. Stackpoole also admitted to HuffPost in a text message that he sent the videos and suggested that police officers knew he had done so when officers “took [Carone’s] official ‘confession.’”

“The reason I got charged for it is it was sent off of my phone,” Carone, a self-proclaimed cybersecurity analyst, told HuffPost. “I just said screw it, I’m going to have to take it.”

Carone’s alleged computer crime and false accusations about hacking are directly relevant to her credibility.

The Trump campaign and the president’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, put Carone forward, presented her as a credible witness and asked state legislators to disenfranchise millions of Michigan voters and declare Trump the winner of Michigan’s electoral votes based in large part on Carone’s claims.

“There is no rule that people coming off probation are incredible as a matter of law,” Giuliani texted HuffPost when asked about Carone’s credibility. “I don’t know her circumstances, but her testimony is corroborated by other witnesses, documentary evidence and expert testimony.” Giuliani also took the opportunity to point out that Hunter Biden used cocaine.

Stackpoole’s ex-wife, the target of the pair’s wrath, provided HuffPost with a prosecutor’s letter naming her as Carone’s victim, and her former attorney corroborated her story. She told HuffPost that the couple had torn her life apart. (HuffPost is not identifying the ex-wife out of concern for the privacy of Stackpoole’s minor son.)

Explicit videos featuring Carone and Stackpoole came from an address with the ex-wife’s maiden name on it, which Stackpoole’s ex-wife believes Carone set up. Stackpoole, according to police records, claimed his ex-wife unlawfully accessed his account, a false allegation that Carone also made.

Carone later denied to police that she sent the videos but then confessed she did send them, adding that she wanted to send her boyfriend’s ex-wife “over the top,” Deadline Detroit reported, based on police records.

Now Carone is telling a much different story, despite what she reportedly told police. Carone admitted in a phone interview that she initially told police she believed her fiance’s ex-wife unlawfully obtained the videos. But she argued that she didn’t make a false allegation at the time because 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,” Carone said. “He had not yet came out and told me that he had sent it.”

Stackpoole told HuffPost in a text message that he sent the explicit videos to his ex-wife.

Nevertheless, Carone insisted that Americans should still believe she told the truth about voter fraud in Detroit. “I’m 100% credible,” Carone said. “I’ve already talked to Trump and Giuliani about this.”

When pressed on her claim that she spoke to the president, Carone revised her story. “I’ve talked directly to Giuliani that has spoken directly to Trump,” Carone said.

Obviously, this woman is a crank. It’s so ridiculous that Saturday Night Live can’t even top the actual testimony for sheer absurdity. But so are all the other “witnesses” Trump and his freakshow legal team have produced. But it doesn’t matter. At least 50 million people are all in on this nonsense.

Keep in mind that we have hundreds of thousands of people dying as they are doing this…

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