Cleta Mitchell, a far-right lawyer who routinely pushes election conspiracy theories and is laying much of the Trump world's groundwork to challenge the legitimacy of the 2024 election if it doesn't go their way, wasn't always like this.
In fact, growing up in Oklahoma, she was known by her academic and work colleagues as one of the most liberal, progressive people around, having a key role in fighting for the Equal Rights Amendment when she served in the state legislature as a Democrat, among other things.
So what made her switch sides? According to a new profile by The Guardian, her husband's trouble with the law played a big role.
According to the profile, in the 1980s Mitchell left the legislature "to become a vice-president at Citizens National Bank in Oklahoma City, a bank run by Dale Mitchell, the son of a well-known professional baseball player, who she married in 1984."
People who had known her in college and in the legislature say that her husband's politics, and the wealth they earned as bankers, had an influence on her politics, pushing her to the right.
Then, in the early 1990s, "Dale Mitchell was convicted of felony bank fraud, ordered to pay $3 million in restitution and sentenced to five years probation" — something she openly admits convinced her that a large administrative state of the type supported by Democratic lawmakers is "one of the great scandals of our times."
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She became a Republican in 1996, and from that point on worked with many GOP campaigns doing legal work.
Mitchell went on to be one of the key voices attacking the integrity of the 2020 presidential election, and Donald Trump worked hard to get her put on a federal election advisory board, which she was ultimately forced off of amid pressure.
She managed to avoid being charged in the Georgia election racketeering case, which indicted Trump and a number of other operatives who were trying to appoint fake electors and persuade election officials to "find" extra votes.
Recently, she has been at the helm of an effort to lobby key states to crack down on voting access for college students, a key bloc for Democrats.
