International- A Trump-backed nominee for Michigan secretary of state tried to harm her family, a court filing says.
- Kristina Karamo threatened to kill her husband and daughters when he sought a divorce, records show.
The Republican nominee for Michigan secretary of state threatened to kill her own daughters after her husband asked for a divorce, according to court records filed on Friday.
Kristina Karamo, the nominee who received an endorsement from former President Donald Trump, "was committed to an institution for evaluation due to her efforts at self-harm and suicide," court records say.
Her now ex-husband Adom Karamo "was in fact trapped in the marriage for years, always subject to the threat of Mother committing suicide," the filing says.
Family members discouraged the ex-husband from revealing that she had threatened to kill her daughters in response to his ask for a divorce. They said she had been experiencing a mental health crisis at the time, per the filing.
The filing documents other incidents during which Karamo exhibited questionable behavior involving her children. One time, Adom had been driving their car with their kids in the back and Karamo said, "Fu_K it, I'll kill us all," as she tried to take control of the wheel.
"I do not believe that Mother is currently in this state of mind, however, as this was several years ago," Adom said in the filing. "I do believe, however, that her children have been the only thing that has kept her sane, and hence I have not been as aggressive as I should have been in terms of pursuing parenting time legally, because I had fears about how she might react should Father be granted significant time with daughters."
Karamo has been in the spotlight for controversial statements in the past. Insider previously reported that the Republican nominee once called abortion an act of "child sacrifice."
"Abortion is really nothing new," Karamo said in 2020 during an episode on her podcast. "The child sacrifice is a very satanic practice, and that's precisely what abortion is. And we need to see it as such."
"When people in other cultures — when they engage in child sacrifice — they didn't just sacrifice the child for the sake of bloodshed. They sacrificed the child because they were hoping to get prosperity, and that's precisely why people have abortion now," Karamo added further into the episode.
Karamo, a community college professor who teaches public speaking, attracted Trump's attention last year when she falsely claimed that the former president won the 2020 election against Joe Biden. If elected to secretary of state, she would oversee the 2024 presidential election in the state.