Early voting ends on Saturday, Election Day is Tuesday

DENIERS, CONTINUED FROM 7 “yellow journalist from Mountain Xpress,” and a “jackass” who wasn’t welcome.

Bilello also belittled Wilkie, claiming that Mitchell had “mopped the floor with him” during a recent call.

Bilello is probably best known to readers of The Smoky Mountain News as the person behind a failed effort to pass off “official conservative ballot” handouts at polls during the 2020 Primary Election. The sham ballots, which were also photographed in the Haywood County Republican Party headquarters, endorsed Maggie Valley realtor Lynda Bennett in the crowded 11th Congressional District Republican Primary Election. The problem is, the organization issuing the endorsement, “The Official Conservative Ballot Committee of NC,” was only two days old.

Veteran GOP political operatives from across the region told The Smoky Mountain News they’d never heard of it.

When reached for comment, Bilello insisted the group was legitimate, and that it had thoroughly vetted candidates.

“The candidates have been questioned, they have been interviewed and they have passed the smell test,” she said on Feb. 14, 2020.

Then-candidates Joey Osborne and Madison Cawthorn, along with a spokesperson from the Sen. Jim Davis campaign, all said they’d not been given a chance to interview for the endorsement.

“I don’t know what the big brew-ha-ha is,” Bilello responded, “other than the fact that some of these candidates are annoyed because their guy is not on the ticket, not on the list.”

Interestingly, the ballot didn’t endorse Republican incumbent Sen. Thom Tillis. Bilello told volunteers handing out the ballots to suggest “anybody but Tillis!”

Even Aubrey Woodard, then-chair of the NCGOP’s 11th Congressional District and current campaign manager for NC-11 GOP nominee Chuck Edwards, told SMN that Bilello’s efforts should cease.

“These are transgressions of the rules we should all be following,” Woodard said at the time. “There was no reason for this, and there’s no reason for it to continue.”

Ultimately, an SMN investigation revealed that the ballots were created by a consulting firm with strong ties — roughly $40,000 — to Bennett’s campaign, and that Bilello had taken charge of distributing the ballots to volunteers, and that Bilello was on Bennett’s payroll. An ethics complaint was subsequently filed against Bennett’s campaign. According to public records, the Trump-endorsed Bennett was defended in that claim by none other than Cleta Mitchell.

The complaint doesn’t appear to have gone anywhere after Bennett’s spectacular 2to-1 runoff loss to Madison Cawthorn, who went on to win the seat.

Less than a year later, Mitchell resigned from her firm, Foley & Lardner, after the firm said it was “concerned” about her presence on the infamous Jan. 2, 2021, Trump phone call to Georgia election officials. During the call, Trump asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, to find him just 11,780 votes.

Mitchell has since been subpoenaed by the House Jan. 6 committee and a Fulton County grand jury. Atlanta is in Georgia’s Fulton County.

The sham endorsements weren’t the beginning or the end of Bilello’s dishonest elections-related behavior.

Her LinkedIn profile says she’s chaired the Asheville TEA Party since its 2009 inception. Over those 13 years, the party’s affiliated PAC has been warned of improper activity by the North Carolina State Board of Elections almost half a dozen times.

In 2010 and 2011, the group failed to file required financial reports by the appropriate deadlines, earning it a $500 fine in 2011. The group was again fined $450 in 2015 for the same thing. In 2019, an NCSBE audit found that the group had incorrectly reported cash contributions. The same thing happened again in October 2021, resulting in the group forfeiting $190.

Currently, the Asheville TEA PAC’s website shows a number of “news” posts that cling to discredited theories about the integrity of the 2020 election, including that 19,000 invalid ballots were counted in Arizona (they weren’t) and that pillow salesman Mike Lindell has “absolute proof” that the election was stolen (it wasn’t, and he doesn’t).

Most recently, Bilello’s been active on Facebook, spreading falsehoods about the 2020 election, lashing out at Democrats, RINOs and “fake media.”

On Jan. 6, 2021, as insurrectionists ransacked the Capitol and smeared feces on the walls, Bilello said that Vice President Mike Pence had a constitutional duty to “send this fraudulent election back to the states.” The election wasn’t fraudulent, and even Pence admitted that no vice president had the power to unilaterally accept or reject electoral votes.

A post by Bilello on Inauguration Day, January 20, 2021, incorrectly states that Democrat Joe Biden was not elected by Americans, but was rather an “illegitimate fascist bought and paid for by the Chinese Communist Party.”

This past April, Bilello promoted a screening of “2,000 Mules,” a documentary by “highly respected” conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza, who in 2014 was convicted on campaign finance fraud charges. D’Souza’s film alleges “ballot stuffing” by Democrats in swing states during the 2020 election, without proof. The film’s companion book was abruptly recalled by publishers in September.

Bilello’s history of deception and her demonstrated unwillingness to entertain facts that differ from her own fanciful version of reality make her an interesting choice as the person chosen to put “integrity” into the “North Carolina Elections Integrity Team,” but she’s not alone in that regard.

During Bilello’s three-hour NCEIT seminar — Haywood GOP Chair Kay Miller was also present — Bilello repeatedly mentioned the group’s efforts to train and mobilize poll observers to file reports of alleged election impropriety through an online app so that their “evidence” can be turned over to the North Carolina General Assembly.

So far, the group has leaders in about 25 North Carolina counties who are charged with coordinating local staffing and reporting efforts.

Bilello, an unaffiliated voter who has pulled only Republican ballots since at least 2008, leads NCEIT efforts in Buncombe and Henderson counties and says the group is non-partisan.

Miller has signed up to serve as an at-large early voting observer, per Haywood BOE records.

Miller also filed a public records request on Sept. 1 on behalf of the Haywood GOP, asking the Haywood BOE for cast ballot records. The request was not fulfilled, because cast ballot records F

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Precinct-specific election administrations laptops are readied for their Election Day use in the

Haywood County Board of Elections office. Cory Vaillancourt photo