RALEIGH, NC (AP) — Mark Meadows, President Donald Trump’s former White House chief of staff, will not face voter fraud charges related to his 2020 registration and absentee ballot in North Carolina, a the state attorney general announced on Friday.
Meadows, a former congressman from western North Carolina who worked for Trump in his final months in the Oval Office, has been an outspoken supporter of the former president’s baseless claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him. Meadows has drawn attention of government lawyers when details emerged that he was registered to vote in North Carolina and two other states simultaneously.
Based largely on the findings of a voter fraud investigation completed by the State Bureau of Investigation, Attorney General Josh Stein told The Associated Press there was insufficient evidence to warrant prosecution of Meadows or his wife, Debra.
“Our conclusion was … they had arguments that would help them if they brought a case where we don’t think we can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they engaged in intentional vote fraud,” Stein said , a Democrat. an interview.
Public records showed that Meadows, a Republican, listed a mobile home in Scaly Mountain, North Carolina, that he did not own as his physical address when he registered to vote on Sept. 19, 2020, while still chief of staff. Meadows voted absent in North Carolina in the November general election as Trump won the battleground state by just over 1 percentage point.
The New Yorker, which first reported on Meadows’ 2020 listing earlier this year, said the property’s former owner told the magazine that Meadows’ wife rented the property for a short time and spent only one or two nights there .
Stein said career prosecutors in his department recommended he not pursue charges. In a memo to Stein, those attorneys said evidence shows Meadows and his wife signed a one-year lease on the Scaly Mountain residence that was provided by their landlord. Cell phone records indicated Debra Meadows was in and around Scaly Mountain in October 2020, the memo said, and her husband qualified for a residency exception to state law because he was in public service in Washington.
Election officials interpret state law to mean that a person can register for a “permanent place of residence” at least 30 days before an election. It is an offense to complete a registration form fraudulently or falsely.
Although Mark Meadows “almost certainly was never physically present at the Scaly Mountain address,” the memo states, “the factors weighing in favor of residency in Macon County outweigh the factors weighing against residency.”
Ben Williamson, a spokesman for Mark Meadows, said in a message that he would not comment on Stein’s decision. Mark and Debra Meadows declined to be interviewed by the SBI, the memo said.
Stein’s special prosecutor’s office at the Justice Department took over the investigation at the request of the district attorney in Macon County, where Scaly Mountain is located, about 90 miles (145 kilometers) southwest of Asheville. Prosecutors backed off because Meadows contributed to her campaign and appeared in political ads endorsing her. The Special Prosecutor’s Office asked the SBI to investigate, and the agency completed its initial work last month.
In April, the Macon County Board of Elections removed Meadows from the local election rolls.
Public records also indicated that Meadows was registered to vote in Virginia in 2021 and South Carolina in March after he and his wife bought a home there.
Meadows began raising public suspicion of widespread voter fraud leading up to the 2020 general election as polls showed Trump trailing President Joe Biden. He repeated those baseless claims throughout the election cycle and after the race, as Trump insisted the election was rigged.
Election officials from both parties, as well as judges and Trump’s attorney general, concluded that there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.
Meadows was prominent on the US House committee that looked into the events leading up to the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021. He is urging federal prosecutors to “bring to justice” those responsible for the conspiracy “to bring to justice danger to our democracy,” Stein said. . in a news release that those matters were not relevant to the fraud allegations his office was looking into.
Stein told the AP that while his investigation is closed, the matter could be reopened if evidence from investigations in other jurisdictions is revealed.
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