Cleta Mitchell

Cleta Mitchell

Cleta Mitchell is the founder and chair of the Foundation for Accountability and Integrity in Elections Fund, a senior legal fellow at the Conservative Partnership Institute and founder of the Election Integrity Network. Mitchell was a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Foley & Lardner. She has been called "one of the GOP's top election lawyers over the last quarter of a century" and "the conservative movement's anti-gay eminence grise." Mitchell serves of the board of many conservative groups, such as the American Conservative Union, the Institute for Free Speech (formerly called the Center for Competitive Politics), the Public Interest Legal Foundation, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. Additionally, she has served as counsel for Republican groups, such as the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee, as well as the general counsel for the National Rifle Association.

Mitchell began her career as a "liberal Democrat" in the Oklahoma State House from 1976 to 1984 where she was the first woman in the U.S. to chair the state appropriations and budget committee and "a driving force behind the passage of Oklahoma's Equal Rights Amendment." But by 1996, Mitchell had switched to the Republican party.

In 2020, Mitchell advised Trump's in his attempt to overturn the results of the presidential election. She supported the former president's inaccurate claims that the election was stolen from him and attended a call during which he told Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find" votes that would overturn Biden's victory in the state. In November 2023, Mitchell stepped down from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s Board of Advisors after a public outcry because of her involvement in the January 6th insurrection. Free Speech for People on the steeping down of Mitchell "In two letters to the USCCR, the groups argued that Cleta Mitchell’s repeated efforts to undermine voting rights and to promote the false claim of election fraud in the 2020 presidential election, as well as her testimony before the congressional January 6th Committee in 2022 where she claimed that no one in the American public has a constitutional right to vote for President of the United States, were deeply incompatible with the purpose and mandate of both commissions. A special grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia unanimously recommended that Mitchell be indicted for her role in conspiring with Trump and others to overturn the 2020 presidential election."

Mitchell, for her role in the insurrection, was never indicted by Fulton County.

News and Controversies

Mitchell Strategizes Around Restricting College Voters Ability to Vote

In April 2023, at a GOP donor's retreat, Cleta Mitchell gave a presentation titled “A Level Playing Field for 2024,” in which she outlined the GOP's strategy to reduce voting access and turnout among certain groups. Two groups that were highlighted were students and those who vote by mail which traditionally tend to vote Democratic.

Mitchell's endorsement of these policies shines a spotlight on what she wants. To ensure Republicans win every race, she and her colleagues are willing to go so far as to make it impossible for portions of the population to vote, disenfranchising millions of Americans to achieve her personal goals.

Recipient of the Council for National Policy's 'Lantern of Liberty' Award

In May of 2021, it was reported at an annual Council for National Policy meeting that CNP gave its "Lantern of Liberty" award to Republican Lawyer Cleta Mitchell.

Leads So-Called "Election Integrity" Network

In 2022, After leaving the law firm Foley & Lardner, Cleta Mitchell began working for the Conservative Partnership Institute. Since starting her role, she now leads CPI's "Election Integrity Network," which 'aims to train conservative poll watchers as part of a broader effort to create enough disputes to justify intervention in the election by Republican-controlled state legislatures."

Mitchell Works With ALEC and Heritage Foundation to support the "Big Lie"

In January 2021, after the insurrection at the Capitol, which occurred on January 6th, numerous groups pushed back against the conspiracy theory and cut ties with organizations that played a hand in the riot. ALEC, on their part, has openly embraced the "big lie," going so far as to promote other election conspiracies across the country. Working with the Heritage Foundation, they hired Cleta Mitchell to develop a strategy for “questioning the validity of an election.”

Center for Election Integrity 'Action Sessions' Really Advocate for Voting Rights Restrictions

In May 2021, after joining America First Policy Institute's 'Center for Election Integrity," Mitchell hosted an "action session" at the group's 40th-anniversary meeting. At the session, along with U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds who is a noted election objector, Mitchell outlined the GOP's new efforts to combat the national voting rights effort.

Joined the Conservative Partnership Institute as Senior Legal Fellow

In 2021, Mitchell joined the Conservative Partnership Institute as a senior legal fellow and is planning to use her role to "coordinate" conservative voting positions, including in opposition to Democrat-led H.R.1, an elections reform bill that would undo Voter ID laws, support mail-in ballots, and enact automatic voter registration.

Chair of FreedomWorks "National Election Protection Initiative"

In March 2021, FreedomWorks announced Michell would lead a project called the "National Election Protection Initiative", which will oppose H.R. 1, a voting rights bill, oppose other federal voting rights legislation, and focus on the swing-states Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Promoting Gerrymandering to State Legislatures

In August 2019, ALEC launched its secret “Political Process Working Group,” in which the group focuses on improving election outcomes for Republicans. Cleta Mitchell told a group in her “What is Redistricting and why must we do it?” session at ALEC's 2019 annual meeting. She told attendees, “we’re going to teach you how to gerrymander” and “legislators were advised to treat redistricting as ‘political adult blood sport,’ trash potential evidence before it can be discovered through litigation, avoid the word gerrymander, and make deals with black and Latino legislators that guarantee them easy reelections by packing as many minority voters as possible into their districts, thereby making the rest of the map whiter and more conservative,”

ALEC's Secret Working Group

In 2019, ALEC "created a secret working group on elections to engage right-wing leaders and lawyers to coach its legislative members on voter suppression and partisan gerrymandering strategies." The group was helmed by Cleta Mitchell and Arizona state Rep. Shawnna Bolick. The CEO of ALEC, Lisa Nelson, wrote on the group, “The issues we plan to cover include but are not limited to; election law and ballot integrity; campaign finance; electoral college; redistricting and citizen vote questions.”

Defending Trump's Claims of a "Stolen Election"

After the 2020 presidential election, Mitchell publicly defended Trump's inaccurate claims that the election was stolen from him, including telling Reuters "the president's allies were prepared to fight what she characterized as a 'very well-planned-out assault' by liberals to change rules about ballot counting after Election Day..."

Mitchell also attended a call during which Trump told Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find" votes that would overturn Biden's victory in the state. She resigned from the law firm Foley & Lardner a few days after the call was exposed by the Washington Post.

A former senior attorney at the Justice Department's voting right section noted that Mitchell "reportedly interjected multiple times during the call in which she tried to support Trump's allegations of fraud... Her role in that call may well be part of the investigation [into whether Trump and others broke the law pressuring Raffensperger to overturn Biden's victory in Georgia].

Defending Former EPA Director, Scott Pruitt

The paperwork to start the scandal-ridden former head of the EPA Scott Pruitt's legal defense fund was filed by Mitchell who also served as Pruitt's attorney. According to E&E News that fund did not become "active" until 2018. The only contribution to that fund in 2018 came from millionaire Diane Hendricks. Mitchell was an active part of defending Scott Pruitt after ethics and campaign finance violation allegations surfaced during his tenure at the EPA, in a National Review article, Mitchell called Pruitt's scandals which ultimately led to Pruitt's resignation, "a manufactured crisis, punctuated by false or exaggerated accusations."

Served on Board of Public Interest Legal Foundation

Cleta Mitchell is the Board Chair of the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), which sent letters to hundreds of local election workers in November 2017 "as part of a larger concerted effort to remove voters from registration lists and further its false and baseless claim that there is widespread voter fraud across the country."

One panel at the Council for National Policy's 2020 national meeting was called "Election Results and Legal Battles: What Now?". The discussion featured Mitchell, PILF President Christian Adams, and other lawyers.

Mitchell has indicated that PILF "could get active in the legal battles over the new Georgia law", which "makes voting tougher with new curbs on absentee ballots and on voters in heavily Democratic urban and suburban areas..."

Changed Political Ideology After Husband Convicted of Bank Fraud

Mitchell was a Democrat at the beginning of her political career. She helped pass the Equal Rights Amendment in Oklahoma and authored a successful universal preschool proposal in the state. Michell's second husband, Fidelity National Bank board chairman Dale Mitchell, was convicted of fraud in 1992. Cleta Mitchell called his conviction a result of "overreaching government regulation" and "became increasingly disenchanted with the social liberal policies she had supported and moved to Washington to become director of the Term Limits Institute... The combination of events led her to switch her registration to independent and then Republican."

Ties to the Council for National Policy

As of September 2020, Mitchell is a Board of Governors member of the Council for National Policy.

Council for National Policy

The Council for National Policy (CNP) is a secretive, Christian Right organization of funders and activists founded in 1981 by activist Morton Blackwell, commentator Paul Weyrich, direct-mail pioneer Richard Viguerie, right-wing activist Phyllis Schlafly and Left Behind author Tim LaHaye. Anne Nelson's book about CNP, Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right, describes how the organization connects "the manpower and media of the Christian right with the finances of Western plutocrats and the strategy of right-wing Republican political operatives.” CNP membership as of September 2020 is available here.

Ties to the Bradley Foundation

As of February 2021, Mitchell is a board member of the Bradley Foundation.

Bradley Files

In 2017, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), publishers of SourceWatch, launched a series of articles on the Milwaukee-based Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, exposing the inner-workings of one of America's largest right-wing foundations. 56,000 previously undisclosed documents laid bare the Bradley Foundation's highly politicized agenda. CMD detailed Bradley's efforts to map and measure right wing infrastructure nationwide, including by dismantling and defunding unions to impact state elections; bankrolling discredited spin doctor Richard Berman and his many front groups; and more. Find the series here at ExposedbyCMD.org.

Affiliations

This is a comprehensive list of Cleta Mitchell's past and present board positions. This information was obtained from IRS tax filings along with publically listed information.

• Chairman Dir, Public Interest Legal Foundation Inc
• Senior Legal Fellow & Secretary, Conservative Partnership Institute,
• Director, Institute For Free Speech
• Secretary, 1792 Exchange Inc
• Director, , National Association Of Political Fundraisers
• Secretary, Stand Up To China Inc
• Secretary, Coalitions For America
• Director, National Association Of Political Fundraisers
• Chairma, Public Interest Legal Foundation Inc
• Treasurer, Committee To Unleash Prosperity Inc
• Director, Institute For Free Speech
• Secretary, Alliance Of Health Care Sharing Ministries Inc
• Board Secretary, Conservative Partnership Institute
• Secretary, Neighbors For A Better Lakeview
• Secretary, Stand Up To China Inc
• Secretary, Freedomworks Inc
• Secretary, Freedomworks Foundation
• Secretary, Coalitions For America
• Treasurer, Committee To Unleash Prosperity Inc
• Secretary, Freedomworks Foundation
• Board Secretary, Conservative Partnership Institute
• Director, National Association Of Political Fundraisers
• Secretary, Alliance Of Health Care Sharing Ministries Inc
• Secretary, Freedomworks Inc
• Treasurer, Article Iii Inc
• Director, Institute For Free Speech
• Board Secretary, Conservative Partnership Institute
• Secretary, Neighbors For A Better Lakeview
• Secretary, Coalitions For America
• Secretary, Neighbors For A Better Lakeview
• Secretary, Citizens Of The American Republic
• Director, Institute For Free Speech
• Director, Institute For Free Speech
• Secretary, Alliance Of Health Care Sharing Ministries Inc
• Secretary, Committee To Unleash Prosperity Inc
• Director, National Association Of Political Fundraisers
• Secretary, Coalitions For America
• Director, International Foundation For Electoral Systems
• Director, Institute For Free Speech
• Director, International Foundation For Electoral Systems
• Secretary, Citizens For The Republic Inc
• Director, Committee To Unleash Prosperity Inc
• Secretary, Coalitions For America
• Secretary, Coalitions For America
• Secretary, Citizens For The Republic Inc
• Secretary, League Of American Voters
• Secretary, Coalitions For America
• Vice President, Galen Institute Inc
• Secretary, Citizens For The Republic Inc
• Secretary, League Of American Voters
• Secretary, Coalitions For America
• Vice President, Galen Institute Inc
• Secretary, Citizens For The Republic Inc
• Secretary, Coalitions For America
• Vice Chairman, Galen Institute Inc
• Secretary, Citizens For The Republic Inc
• Secretary, Coalitions For America
• Vice Chairman, Galen Institute Inc
• Director, National Rifle Association Of America

Articles and Resources

Related SourceWatch

• American Conservative Union
• Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington
• Conservative Partnership Institute
• Council for National Policy
• Diane Hendricks
• Donald Trump
• FreedomWorks
• Institute for Free Speech
• Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
• National Rifle Association
• Public Interest Legal Foundation
• Scott Pruitt
• Washington Post