RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff for President Donald Trump, will not face voter fraud charges related to 2020 registration and absentee voting in North Carolina, the state attorney general announced Friday.
Meadows, a former western North Carolina congressman who worked for Trump during his final months in the Oval Office, is an outspoken supporter of the former president’s baseless claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him. Meadows caught the attention of government lawyers when details emerged that he was registered to vote in North Carolina and two other states.
Based on the findings of a voter fraud investigation completed by the State Bureau of Investigation, Attorney General Josh Stein told The Associated Press that there is not enough evidence to warrant prosecution of Meadows or his wife, Debra.
“Our conclusion is … he has an argument that would help him in a case like this, so we don’t believe we can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he committed intentional voter fraud,” said Stein, a Democrat. interview.
Public records show Meadows, a Republican, listed a mobile home in Scaly Mountain, North Carolina, which he does not own, as his physical address when he registered to vote on Sept. 19, 2020, when he was still his chief of staff. Meadows cast absentee ballots in North Carolina by mail for the November general election, when Trump won the battleground state by more than 1 percentage point.
The New Yorker, which first reported earlier this year on Meadows’ 2020 registration, said the property owner previously told the magazine that Meadows’ wife had rented the property for a short time and only spent one or two nights there.
Stein said a career prosecutor in her department recommended that the charges not be pursued. In a memo to Stein, the attorney said evidence showed Meadows and his wife had signed a one-year lease for the Scaly Mountain home provided by their landlord. Cell phone records showed Debra Meadows was in and around Scaly Mountain in October 2020, the memo said, and her husband qualified for a residency exemption under state law because he was in public service in Washington.
Election officials interpret state law to allow people to register at a “permanent place” at least 30 days before an election. Completing a registration form fraudulently or fraudulently is a low class felony.
Although Mark Meadows “almost certainly never lived at the Scaly Mountain address,” the memo read, “the factors favoring living in Macon County outweigh the factors weighing on housing.”
Ben Williamson, spokesman for Mark Meadows, said in a text that he had no 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. The DA resigned because Meadows had donated 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 work early last month.
In April, the Macon County Board of Elections removed Meadows from the local voter rolls.
Public records also show that Meadows is registered to vote in Virginia in 2021 and in South Carolina this March, after he and his wife bought a home there.
Meadows has since raised public suspicions of widespread voter fraud leading up to the 2020 general election as polls show 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 Trump’s own judges and attorney general, have concluded there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.
Meadows was clearly mentioned in the US House committee that investigated the events that led to the Capitol riots on January 6, 2021. When asking federal prosecutors to “accountable” those responsible for the conspiracy “to put our democracy at risk,” said Stein. in a news release that the matter did not match the fraud allegations his office was looking into.
Stein told the AP that even though the investigation is over, the case could be reopened if evidence from investigations in other jurisdictions is revealed.