Republican lawyer is key player in voter suppression drive across U.S.
It was an abrupt end to two decades as a partner at legal giant Foley & Lardner for the influential and conservative election lawyer Cleta Mitchell.
Days after Mitchell participated in Donald Trump’s controversial 2 January phone call with Georgia’s secretary of state where the then president pressured him to “find” him more votes to reverse Joe Biden’s win, Mitchell resigned her post in the midst of an internal firm review and mounting criticism.
But Mitchell, a combative and top lawyer in the right’s drive to promote unproven charges of sizable voting fraud in 2020 and tighten future voting laws, was not idle for long. She has now emerged in a series of roles that have put her at the heart of what many see as a ferocious Republican push on limiting voting rights that now reaches across America.
Last month, Mitchell was tapped by the libertarian FreedomWorks to spearhead a $10m drive in seven key states including Georgia, Arizona and Michigan to change voting laws to curb potential but unproven election fraud, which many Democrats and legal experts view as aimed at limiting minority votes.
According to a FreedomWorks spokesman, another key part of Mitchell’s mission leading its “National Election Protection Initiative”, is to rally opposition to a House-passed bill that in part would expand voting rights nationally which its sponsors see as necessary to counter the conservative assaults on voting rights in many states. [Continue reading…]