# Cleta Mitchell Veteran conservative election lawyer who was on Trump's infamous January 2, 2021 call to Georgia Secretary of State [[Brad Raffensperger]] — the call where Trump demanded officials "find 11,780 votes" — and who subsequently reinvented herself as the conservative movement's central architect of voter restriction infrastructure through her Election Integrity Network. ## Background Mitchell spent decades as a Republican election lawyer and partner at the prominent firm Foley & Lardner. She served in the Oklahoma state legislature as a Democrat before switching parties, eventually becoming one of the conservative legal movement's most connected operatives on election law. Her career placed her at the intersection of dark money networks, the [[Federalist Society]] orbit, and Republican electoral strategy — a position that made her particularly dangerous when she turned those skills toward [[Stop the Steal]]. ## The Raffensperger Call Mitchell was one of the participants on the January 2, 2021 call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger — the most direct piece of evidence of Trump personally attempting to overturn a state election result. The call was recorded because Raffensperger's team anticipated pressure and planned to document it. During the call, Mitchell pressed specific (and false) claims about voter irregularities in Georgia, providing the legalistic scaffolding for Trump's cruder demand to "find" votes. Her presence served a structural function: having a credentialed election lawyer on the call gave the appearance of a legitimate legal inquiry rather than what it was — an attempt to pressure a state official into reversing a certified election. **Consequence**: Foley & Lardner pushed her out within days of the call becoming public. The firm issued a statement saying she had "informed us of her decision to resign" — the corporate equivalent of being fired. ## Post-2020: The Election Integrity Network Rather than retreating after the Raffensperger call debacle, Mitchell doubled down and built something potentially more consequential than any single phone call: the **[[Election Integrity Network]] (EIN)**, launched in 2021 as a project of the [[Conservative Partnership Institute]], where she is a senior legal fellow. (An earlier version of this page placed it at the Heritage Foundation; corrected 2026-10-09.) The EIN operates as a nationwide infrastructure for voter restriction efforts, training conservative activists in election monitoring, poll watching, and challenging voter registrations. Its stated goal is "election integrity"; its functional effect is suppressing voter access, particularly in communities of color. The network operates across multiple states and coordinates with state-level Republican officials. **Key features of the EIN model**: The network trains poll watchers and election challengers who can create disruption at polling places. It provides legal frameworks for mass voter roll challenges. It coordinates with state legislatures on restrictive voting legislation. And it wraps all of this in the language of "integrity" and "security" — the sanitized vocabulary that makes voter suppression sound like good governance. ### From the network into the government The network's reach now runs inside the federal government. [[Heather Honey]], a Mitchell protégée who led EIN's Pennsylvania chapter ([[Pennsylvania Fair Elections]]) and whose consulting firm [[Verity Vote]] was paid by Mitchell's [[FAIR Elections Fund]], became DHS's deputy assistant secretary for election integrity in August 2025. ICE records released in October 2026 credit her with supplying 48.4 million voter records to an ICE program that was loading state voter rolls into Palantir's deportation-targeting system. See [[ICE Voter Records Collection]]. ## Dark Money Connections Mitchell sits at a node connecting several major dark money networks to election infrastructure work. Her relationships with [[Leonard Leo]]'s network and the [[Bradley Foundation]]'s funding apparatus give the Election Integrity Network access to resources far beyond what a single lawyer could mobilize. The Heritage Foundation's institutional support provides additional legitimacy and infrastructure. She has also been connected to [[Ginni Thomas]] (wife of Supreme Court Justice [[Clarence Thomas]]), who texted [[Mark Meadows]] extensively about overturning the 2020 election. Mitchell and Thomas operate in overlapping conservative legal circles where Stop the Steal claims remained mainstream long after courts rejected them. ## Analytical Framework Mitchell represents the **institutional conversion** model of Stop the Steal: rather than working through chaotic rallies and social media (the [[Ali Alexander]] model) or through courts (the [[Sidney Powell]]/Giuliani model), she channeled election denial energy into permanent institutional infrastructure. The Election Integrity Network is Stop the Steal translated into policy machinery. This makes her arguably more consequential than the more famous Stop the Steal figures. Powell, Giuliani, and Ellis faced legal consequences and lost their ability to practice law. Mitchell built an organization that continues to operate and that has influenced voting laws and practices in dozens of states. The Raffensperger call was an acute crisis; the EIN is a chronic condition.