Giuliani’s Wine Lady Witness Parodied By Cecily Strong On ‘SNL’ Has A Wild Legal History, Including Accusations Of Harassing People With Sex Tapes

Every now and again, the comedy gods conspire to give one member of the Saturday Night Live cast a perfect opportunity for an impression that defines a viral moment. Saturday brought one for Cecily Strong, as a witness in Rudy Giuliani’s fruitless election hearing in Michigan brought a slurring, wild performance to the viral public that everyone hoped she’d take full advantage of.

Strong hit it out of the park on Saturday with a pitcher-perfect take on Mellissa Carone, who went viral due to her wild testimony that had even a squeaky Giuliani trying to restrain her a bit. The moment made many wonder where Giuliani even found the cast of characters who have appeared to allege all kinds of bogus claims, and some digging done by reporters has revealed some wild things about Carone in particular.

As the Huffington Post’s Ryan J. Reilly caught up with Carone, who had plenty to say about not only her viral appearance but some other wild things in her history.

As Reilly detailed in a Twitter thread as well as the story on HuffPo, Carone recently got probation in a case where she apparently framed a woman for stealing sex videos.

She was previously charged under the name Mellissa Wright with first degree obscenity and using a computer to commit a crime. Under a plea agreement, she reduced her charge to disorderly conduct and received 12 months of probation, a spokeswoman for the Wayne County, Michigan, prosecutor’s office told HuffPost. Her probation ended on Sept. 13, just weeks before Election Day, when a temporary staffing agency employed Carone to assist Dominion Voting Systems in Detroit.

But Carone, in an interview with HuffPost on Saturday, claimed that it was actually her fiance, Matthew Stackpoole, who sent the explicit videos to his ex-wife and that she took a plea deal only because they didn’t want to spend any more time in court. Stackpoole also admitted to HuffPost in a text message that he sent the videos and suggested that police officers knew he had done so when officers “took [Carone’s] official ‘confession.’”

“The reason I got charged for it is it was sent off of my phone,” Carone, a self-proclaimed cybersecurity analyst, told HuffPost. “I just said screw it, I’m going to have to take it.”

Committing crimes using the technology you claim to be an expert in is a pretty brazen move, though perhaps not as brazen as claiming widespread election fraud and having produced zero evidence to back said claims up. The Huffington Post story has plenty of details about the weird sex tape scandal, but perhaps it’s Giuliani’s defense of Carone that best sums all this up. It also helps to know the context where the quote came from.

Giuliani is definitely right about one thing: you could certainly describe all this using the word “incredible.”

[via HuffPo]