A witness whose dramatic testimony about alleged voter fraud in Michigan went viral last week has said she is not self-quarantining and has not been tested for the coronavirus even after Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who accompanied her at a legislative hearing, tested positive earlier this week and was later hospitalized to treat the virus, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday.
Neither Mellissa Carone nor Giuliani wore a mask while seated side-by-side at a hearing in Lansing, Michigan, last week. According to the Post, Carone had also posed for photos with Giuliani, who health officials later said was “extremely likely” to have been contagious at the time.
Carone’s refusal to take precautions amid likely exposure to coronavirus comes as local health officials on Monday issued an order requiring anyone who had been in close contact with the Trump lawyer for more than 15 minutes to self-quarantine following reports of his infection.
President Trump’s lawyer may have also infected scores of others as he spent the week traveling the country on behalf of President Donald Trump’s campaign, making false claims of election fraud.
Carone had become a low-level technician at a Detroit elections center shortly after concluding 12 months of probation after pleading guilty to disorderly conduct in Michigan’s Wayne County, according to court records reviewed by the Post. Those allegations involved sending sexually explicit messages to her boyfriend’s ex-wife.
While both Trump and Giuliani boasted that Carone was a top witness in their efforts to overturn election results in the battleground state, a judge ruled that her allegations were “simply are not credible.”
In the wake of her dismissed testimony, Carone told the Post in a phone interview that she was conducting her life in the same way she had prior to accompanying the now ill Giuliani in court and did not have plans to change course. She also claimed that she was unaware of the health advisory and rebuffed concerns that she had might have contracted coronavirus.
“I would take it seriously if it came from Trump, because Trump cares about American lives,” Carone told the Post, suggesting that if conservative television networks like One America News or Newsmax which have often been sympathetic to Trump’s defiance of health guidelines “told me to go get tested, I would do it.”
“It is not that I don’t believe in getting tested. I don’t trust the tests,” Carone told the Post.
