Cleta Mitchell

Mitchell served as a member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives from 1976 to 1984, as member of the Democratic Party.[5] In her second term, Mitchell chaired the Oklahoma House Appropriations and Budget Committee.[5][7][8][9] She served on the executive committee of the National Conference of State Legislatures.[7][8][9] She was a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Institute of Politics in 1981.[10][11]

Mitchell returned to politics and ran unsuccessfully for Oklahoma lieutenant governor in 1986.[10] In 1996, Mitchell switched her political affiliation from Democratic to independent, and then, to the Republican.[10][2][12]

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.[10] 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.[13]

Until January 2021, Mitchell was a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Foley & Lardner,[7][8][9] resigning due to its concern about her involvement in the call Trump made to attempt reversal of the Georgia certified votes in the 2020 election. She has served as legal counsel for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee, and the National Rifle Association.[7][8] She has represented Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-NC), Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), Sen. Gordon Smith (R-OR), Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO), Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), and Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK).[9][1] She has also represented Tea Party Republican candidates Sharron Angle of Nevada and Alaska's Joe Miller.[1]

She is on the boards of numerous conservative organizations, including the Bradley Foundation,[14] the National Rifle Association (NRA) (where she has also been a lawyer), the American Conservative Union Foundation,[15][16] as well as the Republican National Lawyers Association, of which she is a former president.[7][8][9] 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.[10]

In 2013, conservative Newsmax magazine named Mitchell as one of the Republican Party's 25 most influential women.[17]

Mitchell has been a leading critic of the IRS; accusing the agency of targeting tea party groups.[18][19] She testified before Congress in 2014, asserting that "the commissioner of the IRS lied to congress".[19] She called for the IRS to be abolished.[18] Investigations by Congress and federal agencies later concluded that there was no evidence that the IRS targeted conservative groups.[18]

Mitchell represented Donald Trump in 2011, defending him against accusations that he had violated federal election laws in an exploratory campaign for president.[20]

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.[21] In 2019, she represented Stephen Bannon's nonprofit, Citizens of the American Republic.[19]

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 a staunch opponent of public health measures implemented at the state and local levels to halt the spread of COVID-19.[2] In late September 2020, she attended a White House event celebrating Trump's nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. Mitchell did not wear a mask and did not socially distance. The event became a COVID-19 superspreading event, with numerous attendees and participants testing positive for COVID-19 shortly afterward. Despite having been exposed to COVID-19, Mitchell attended another event days later in which she again did not wear a mask nor did she socially distance, in contravention of U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines that state that people exposed to COVID-19 should self-isolate for 14 days to avoid infecting others.[22]

Mitchell is chair of the conservative activist group Public Interest Legal Foundation that is known for making false claims of voter fraud.[23] Without evidence, 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]

After Joe Biden won the 2020 election and President Donald Trump refused to concede, Mitchell claimed without evidence that dead people voted in the election.[25]

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 thinly supported claims disputing the results of the 2020 presidential election that allegedly were based on doctored videos and unsubstantiated rumors from right-wing media. Following that telephone call Mitchell accused Raffensperger, without evidence, of saying things "that are simply not correct" about the presidential results in Georgia.[26][27] On January 4, the law firm of Foley & Lardner released a statement saying the firm's policy is not to represent parties seeking to contest the results of the 2020 election, that they are "aware of, and concerned by" Mitchell's participation in the telephone call, and were "working to understand her involvement more thoroughly".[28] The next day, she resigned from Foley & Lardner. The firm then issued a statement that said Mitchell "concluded that her departure was in the firm’s best interests, as well as in her own personal best interests".[20] She blamed a purported "massive pressure campaign in the last several days mounted by leftist groups via social media" for her resignation.[29]