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Private Emails Reveal How Trump’s Far-Right Lawyer Ended Up on a Government Election Commission
CNN obtained emails revealing former President Donald Trump was pushing the appointment of his lawyer Cleta Mitchell to the federal election advisory board.
According to the emails, conservatives were working well before the Nov. 2020 election to get his hand-picked person on the Election Assistance Commission, which is supposed to be an independent agency that gives election guidelines for states.
Mitchell was one of those who participated in Trump’s infamous phone call where he demanded that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R-GA) “find” 11,780 votes so that he could win the Georgia election.
The story of how she was appointed to that board “underscores how a core faction of Republicans has focused on pushing unsupported claims of widespread voter fraud even before Trump convinced much of the Republican Party to buy into his election lies that the 2020 election had been stolen,” CNN wrote.
Raffensperger, along with Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, is facing well-funded allies of Trump’s in a GOP primary that will reveal the extent to which the former president can control the voters after his “big lie” election conspiracy. Polls still indicate that the overwhelming majority (70 percent) of Republican voters believe that the 2020 election was won by Trump.
An Atlanta Journal-Constitution/University of Georgia poll revealed that 45 percent of GOP primary voters indicated they would prefer to vote for a candidate that had Trump’s endorsement. It might explain why Trump’s hand-picked candidate, disgraced Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) is failing with just 27 percent of the vote as of April.
“According to the House committee investigating the insurrection and a Washington Post report disclosing White House records, Trump also spoke with Mitchell on the evening of Jan. 6, 2021,” said CNN.
Mitchell left her law firm after the Trump Georgia call that was recorded and sent to the media. Now, however, she gets to influence election policy inside the government after her boss was voted out of office. She was appointed after an appointment to a government group developing civil rights policy and civil rights enforcement of the law.
“The emails obtained by CNN show how conservatives on the civil rights commission worked for months to gain a Republican appointment to the election advisory board,” said CNN. “After two Trump appointments in 2020 gave the civil rights commission a 4-4 partisan split, the conservatives threatened to stop the commission’s work in a bid for concessions – including a Republican election board appointment – in exchange for approving the civil rights commission’s new Democratic chair.”
“I made it plain to her we could stop the business of the commission if we were not treated fairly, and fairness is all we want,” wrote Trump-appointed civil rights commissioner J. Christian Adams. He was the one who pushed the addition of Mitchell.
Adams is no stranger to claims of voter fraud when there aren’t any. In fact, he was part of Trump’s “election integrity commission” that aimed to find 3 million undocumented “Mexicans” who voted illegally. They never did and Trump ended the commission. A commissioner later revealed that they found no evidence of voter fraud.
When CNN asked for comment, Adams claimed the conservative appointment could work because the rules required the vote to be bipartisan “and that needed to be fixed.”
“We had the votes to get it done, and we got it done,” he said. “Cleta Mitchell has been a breath of fresh air on the advisory board already. Too often insiders don’t hear outside perspectives so I am thrilled that she is bringing diverse viewpoints that the advisory board might have not heard before.”
The chief of the commission admitted she wasn’t pleased with the appointment.
Mitchell is now using language around election “confidence” to justify election restrictions. There are people who feel bad, after buying into the 2020 “big lie.” Thus the law should cater to the feelings of the minority and restrict the votes of the majority of voters.
“We need to make this as transparent as possible to restore confidence in the voting systems,” she said. “I think this is probably one of the biggest challenges that we face in elections today.”
In Aug. 2020, Adams pushed voter fraud claims before the election had even been conducted. He told former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows on Nov. 9, 2020, that Mitchell offered to start a non-profit group “to deal with raising money and paying for the cyber portion” of the election fraud claims. “She offered to do it if necessary.”
Adams then tried to have Democratic colleague Michael Yaki removed from the commission. At the time, Yaki was pushing a plan to ensure that the U.S. Postal Service meet mail-in-ballot deadlines because it might be “incapable” of doing so, the emails show. The rest of the commission blocked him from doing anything about it.
“My question is how does he get UNDONE from the EAC oversight commission? How does that get revoked and replaced?” Adams asked in another email to Meadows.
“The Republicans on the Civil Rights Commission discovered in the fall of 2020 that appointments to the election advisory board were supposed to be bipartisan, but both were Democrats. They also found that the commissioners had never voted on the current appointments, the emails show,” said CNN.
So, Republicans sent a letter from the GOP Civil Rights commission asking the Election Assistance Commission to question the legitimacy of the Democratic appointees.
“There are significant doubts that this ‘appointment’ was actually an appointment that followed our Commission’s regular procedures,” they wrote in the letter.
It was only after Joe Biden took over that the Civil Rights commissioners began renegotiating the rules for the next appointment to the election commission.
“If we were to appoint Commissioner Adams to the EAC there would be some pretty significant public blow back,” wrote a communications aide.
By July 2021 the GOP chairs put Mitchell and Adams in as their two candidates. The Democrats chose Mitchell over Adams. Then they raised ethical concerns about Mitchell. She serves on Adams’ election integrity organization. The general counsel of the commission declared there was no conflict and there shouldn’t be any kind of outside investigation.
Read the full report at CNN.
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
