Cleta B. Deatherage Mitchell (néeDeatherage; 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 StateBrad 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.[1]
Early life and education
Cleta Mitchell
Cleta Mitchell was born as Cleta Deatherage on September 16, 1950, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.[2] 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.[3] She received a B.A. in 1973 and a J.D. in 1975, both from the University of Oklahoma.[4]
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.[3] She was also one of the first women to run for student president at the University of Oklahoma, but lost the election.[5]
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.[2] During her tenure, she supported women's rights, the Equal Rights Amendment, and progressive education reform.[5]
Mitchell returned to politics and ran unsuccessfully for Oklahoma lieutenant governor in 1986.[2] Former Oklahoma Governor David Walters said her loss in the Democratic primary to Robert S. Kerr III "precipitated a real turn on her part."[5]
Legal work and conservative activism
In 1991 she moved to Washington, D.C., to become a pro-term limits activist; that year, she was named executive director of the Term Limits Legal Institute.[6] She was co-counsel for the petitioners in the U.S. Supreme Court case U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, in which the Court held that the federal Constitution precluded state governments from imposing term limits for federal office.[7]
In 1996, Mitchell switched her political affiliation from Democratic to independent, and then to Republican.[6][8][9] At some point in the 1990s she rescinded her support for the Equal Rights Amendment and praised its failure to pass.[5]
Mitchell has been a leading critic of the IRS, accusing the agency of targeting Tea Party groups.[13][14] She testified before Congress in 2014, asserting that "the commissioner of the IRS lied to Congress".[14] She called for the IRS to be abolished.[13] Investigations by Congress and federal agencies later concluded that there was no evidence that the IRS targeted conservative groups.[13] She has also represented Tea Party Republican candidates Sharron Angle of Nevada and Alaska's Joe Miller.[15]
In 2018, McClatchyDC reported that Mitchell, as a longtime lawyer for the NRA, had previously expressed concerns about the NRA's close ties to Russia and the possibility that Russia had been funneling cash through the NRA into Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. Mitchell denied ever having expressed such concerns. Mitchell's name was included in a list of people that Democrats on the U.S. House Intelligence Committee sought to interview in connection with the committee's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.[16]
Mitchell was the trustee of EPA administrator Scott Pruitt's legal defense fund. As trustee of that fund, she sought donations to the fund by individuals who had interests before the EPA.[17] In 2019, she represented Stephen Bannon's nonprofit, Citizens of the American Republic.[14]
Mitchell was a staunch opponent of public health measures implemented at the state and local levels to halt the spread of COVID-19.[8][failed verification]
Mitchell is chair of the conservative activist group Public Interest Legal Foundation, which is known for making claims of voter fraud.[23] She has claimed that Democrats engage in a "very well-planned-out assault" on election systems.[23] Prior to the 2020 election, she organized legal efforts to challenge mail-in ballots cast in the election.[24] 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,[25] and The New York Times reported that it was Mitchell who "enlisted John Eastman, the lawyer who crafted speciouslegal theories claiming Vice President Mike Pence could keep Mr. Trump in power."[26]
After Joe Biden won the 2020 election and President Donald Trump refused to concede, Mitchell claimed that dead people voted in the election.[27]
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.[28][29] 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".[30] 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".[12] Mitchell blamed her resignation on a purported "massive pressure campaign" allegedly launched by leftist groups on social media.[31]
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.[35]
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,[40] 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.[26] Speaking about these organizing efforts, during a June 2022 episode of Stephen Bannon's War Room podcast, Mitchell stated: "2020 — never again. That’s our goal."[41]
Some of the ambitions of this newly formed Election Integrity Network may be achieved based on tactics such as poll-monitoring, and filing public records requests, but there are concerns that the group will also focus on researching "local and state officials to determine whether each is a 'friend or foe' of the movement." Mitchell's Election Integrity Network trainings have included "aggressive methods" such as surveillance, and encouraging participants to verify voter rolls themselves. This may put extra pressure on local officials and be disruptive to the voting process, especially "when conducted by people convinced of falsehoods about fraud."[26][41][42]
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.[43]
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.[44]
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".[6] Draper later came out as a gay man, becoming the director of AIDS programming at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health in 1988. He died of AIDS in 1991.[6]
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.[6] They have a daughter.[2] In 1986, the FBI began investigating Dale Mitchell for banking malpractice, and in 1992 he was convicted of five felony counts of conspiracy to defraud, misapplying bank funds and making false statements to banks.[6] He was ordered to pay $3 million in restitution, given a suspended sentence of five years, and ordered to perform community service.[45][46] Her husband's conviction on one count was reversed on appeal and the amount of restitution was reduced.[47] As a consequence of findings of the prosecutors' investigation, he had agreed in 1988 to self-removal from banking.[46] According to Cleta Mitchell, his conviction convinced her that "overreaching government regulation is one of the great scandals of our times".[48]
^Gross, Terry (July 21, 2022). "How the CPI became the most powerful messaging force in the MAGA universe". Fresh Air. NPR. Archived from the original on July 29, 2022. Retrieved July 31, 2022. So running out of one townhouse on Capitol Hill just a few blocks from the Capitol – like I said, you have nearly a dozen different groups, and they include things like the Election Integrity Network, which is an organization run by Cleta Mitchell that is really aimed at training poll watchers and observers and people to file public records requests to really kind of watchdog the upcoming midterm elections. You also have the American Accountability Foundation, which is very different. It's focused on nominees ... there are several PACs, for example, that run out of CPI, including the Freedom Caucus' PAC. There is a PR firm that runs out of CPI. There are podcast and recording studios in the building.
^Stone, Peter (April 18, 2022). "'Election integrity summits' aim to fire up Trump activists over big lie". The Guardian. Archived from the original on July 29, 2022. Retrieved July 31, 2022. Mitchell, CPI's senior legal fellow, has hosted multi-day summits, seeking to mobilize hundreds of conservative activists for elections this year in Georgia, Arizona and Pennsylvania, all states that Trump lost to Joe Biden, and Florida, which he won. CPI is slated to hold summits this spring in Virginia, Michigan and Wisconsin, as it seeks to build 'election integrity' infrastructure in swing states.
^Levine, Sam (June 30, 2022). "Republican push to recruit election deniers as poll workers causes alarm". The Guardian. Archived from the original on July 29, 2022. Retrieved July 31, 2022. The effort, called the Election Integrity Network, underscores how Trump and allies are capitalizing on now deeply seeded Republican doubt about Joe Biden's victory and are targeting key election offices and jobs that play a considerable role in determining how ballots are cast and counted.
