A political action committee run by the wife of Mark Meadows, former President Donald Trump’s chief of staff, has significantly increased its spending on legal bills, paying a high-profile law firm that handles cases including white-collar crime and congressional investigations.
But the group’s leaders aren’t talking about the reasons for the larger payments to lawyers.
Debra Meadows is the executive director of Right Women PAC, an organization founded for the 2020 election that helped fund the primary and winnable general election campaigns of conservative, pro-Trump candidates seeking U.S. House seats — including Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, who both won their races and joined the House Freedom Caucus that Meadows co-founded as a congressman.
Debra Meadows created the PAC. Its advisory board is made up of Freedom Caucus members’ wives, including Amy Kate Budd, the wife of Rep. Ted Budd, who is seeking a U.S. Senate nomination in North Carolina.
Since its inception the PAC employed Cleta Mitchell as its attorney and paid her $500 monthly, according to Federal Election Commission reports.
But beginning on Oct. 23, the PAC paid more than $158,800 in legal fees to Buckley, a high-profile firm that includes partner Preston Burton, an attorney who has represented Monica Lewinsky, former CIA agent Aldrich Ames and former FBI agent Robert Hanssen.
It’s unclear why the PAC is paying Buckley, though the payments began one month after the House Jan. 6 select committee subpoenaed Mark Meadows for both documents and his testimony connected to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol when rioters attempted to stop the election certification of President Joe Biden.
The News & Observer called Buckley. A woman who answered the phone said attorneys are still working remotely due to the pandemic and she wasn’t sure who was assigned to the PAC. A voicemail left with the firm’s marketing department wasn’t immediately returned.
Brett Kappel, an attorney with Harmon Curran who focuses on campaign finance, lobbying and government ethics law cases, spoke with The N&O about what the increase in spending could mean.
“They wound up paying this law firm quite a bit of money — over $100,000 — so that would indicate some sort of significant endeavor on behalf of the committee,” Kappel said, adding that he would assume it’s connected to the subpoena, though Mark Meadows is represented in his dealings with the committee by McGuire Woods.
Kappel said Buckley is a general service law firm, but does have a practice devoted to congressional investigations. He said there isn’t reason to believe Debra Meadows is under investigation for the events of Jan. 6.
“At least if the Select Committee is investigating that, they haven’t made it public, which is why these legal fees are so intriguing,” Kappel said. “It may just be possible that in trying to identify all of the telephones that Mark Meadows had access to and may have used, they cast a wide net and also subpoenaed his wife for her phone or a phone that was paid for by her PAC.”
The N&O tried to learn more about the reason for the legal fees by calling or emailing every member of the PAC’s leadership team, including Debra Meadows, Mitchell, its original treasurer Thomas Datwyler, and the seven advisory board members — all of whom are married to congressmen — including Amy Kate Budd, Cindy Biggs, Rosel Cloud, Cindy Fleming, Polly Jordan, Elaine Norman and Christy Perry. Several phone numbers were no longer in service, the rest didn’t answer their phones and those The N&O could leave messages for did not respond.
The N&O contacted Amy Kate Budd through her husband’s campaign team, which said she had “zero clue” about Buckley’s involvement in the PAC.
The PAC recently took down the portion of its webpage that listed each of its board members.
Debra Meadows has an active email account with Right Women PAC. The N&O emailed asking why the PAC was paying Buckley. Debra Meadows did not respond.
The N&O also called all of the PAC’s donors who gave more than $10,000 since Oct. 1. Only one person answered. Michael Rydin lives in Texas and said he knew about the legal fees. He sad the PAC was trying to help Mark Meadows because people were trying to tie him to the “January 6 thing.”
When pressed if he was certain that’s why the firm was hired, he said he didn’t know.
“I knew something about it at one time but I didn’t pay much attention,” Rydin said. “I did know there was a law firm. I’m glad he’s got representation. I don’t know any of the details and I don’t know what’s what.”
Rydin added that he’s close with Mark and Debra Meadows after being a longtime supporter of Mark Meadows. He was never asked to contribute to legal fees, but if asked he would jump at the opportunity to help them.
Contempt of Congress
The Democratic-controlled House voted on Dec. 14 to hold Mark Meadows, the Republican former representative of North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District, in contempt of Congress for failing to comply with the subpoena from the Jan. 6 committee.
His compliance ebbed and flowed. Mark Meadows refused to hand over evidence and provide testimony in October and November.
Meanwhile, Right Women PAC made payments to Buckley. The firm received $26,402 on Oct. 23 and $63,915 on Nov. 20.
Then, on Nov. 30, the committee announced Meadows had handed over thousands of pages of texts and emails.
He was suppose to appear before the committee to testify in mid-December, but the cooperation stopped. On Dec. 13, the committee referred Mark Meadows for contempt charges.
Another payment went to Buckley: $42,230 on Jan. 1. Then another: $17,790 on Jan. 26. On the latest FEC filing only one more, smaller, payment was made: $1,521 on Feb. 16, which could indicate that the legal troubles have ended or are at least paused temporarily.
Fighting the subpoena
McGuire Woods filed court documents asking a judge to intervene in Meadows’ subpoena. Meadows claims that Trump has executive privilege that would prevent Meadows from disclosing some information.
Attorney John Eastman tried a similar strategy and asked a federal judge to block the Jan. 6 committee’s subpoena of Eastman’s emails with Trump, but on Monday night the judge ordered Eastman to turn over his records.
“Based on the evidence, the Court finds it more likely than not that President Trump corruptly attempted to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021,” Judge David Carter wrote in his order.
Monday night was a busy one for the Jan. 6 committee, Meadows and the people surrounding him.
Within hours of the judge’s ruling, Rep. Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California and member of the Jan. 6 committee, called for the Department of Justice to hold Meadows accountable for his failure to comply.
“Without enforcement of congressional subpoenas, there is no oversight, and without oversight, no accountability — for the former president, or any other president, past, present, or future,” Schiff said in the committee’s meeting. “Without enforcement of its lawful process, Congress ceases to be a co-equal branch of government.”
Cleta Mitchell
The Washington Post published a story after obtaining the White House phone logs from Jan. 6, 2021, which tied Right Women PAC’s attorney, Cleta Mitchell, to Trump on that day.
She is one of several North Carolina lawyers — she has a house in Pinehurst — who Trump consulted with after losing the 2020 election. The White House phone logs detailed that Trump had a seven-hour gap in phone calls during the insurrection, but then called former North Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice Mark Martin, speaking to him for 10 minutes beginning at 7:30 p.m., followed by Mitchell at 7:53 p.m.
Mitchell is also trying to get out of a subpoena, issued earlier this month, from the Jan. 6 committee. She cites Mark Meadows’ own case in court documents filed by her attorney, John Rowley.
Mitchell’s career has taken her from Democratic state lawmaker in Oklahoma to Republican advocate on voter fraud issues, according to CNN.
Often if Debra or Mark Meadows’ name appears in connection to a political organization, so does Mitchell’s, frequently as the attorney.
It was Mitchell’s connection to Mark Meadows that ultimately cost her her job last year and put her near the center of the Jan. 6 investigations.
Both she and Mark Meadows have detailed how their relationship led Mitchell to help Trump try to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results. Meadows wrote briefly about calling her in his book. Mitchell spoke about it on her podcast.
The Post obtained a recording of a call Trump and Mitchell made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger asking him to alter the election results in Georgia. Those tapes resulted in Mitchell resigning from her law firm.
Like Mitchell, Mark Meadows has been pushing conspiracy theories that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump through rampant voter fraud.
So it caught most off guard this month when Mark Meadows faced allegations that he and his wife had committed voter fraud in Sapphire. Because of timing, that’s one legal battle that can be ruled out as a reason for Buckley’s involvement in the PAC.
The New Yorker broke the story that Mark Meadows had used the address of a trailer in Sapphire for his voter registration before casting a ballot in the 2020 election. Reporting by The Post raised similar questions about Debra Meadows’ voter registration. The owner of the rental property told The New Yorker that the couple rented the trailer for two months but Mark Meadows had never visited, while Debra Meadows may have spent only a few nights at the property.
The North Carolina attorney general’s office announced that the State Bureau of Investigation is looking into the allegations. Neither agency will say whether Debra Meadows is also under investigation.
The address remains listed as their current home on their voter registration.
The couple live in a home in Old Town, a historic area on the Potomac River, in Alexandria, Virginia.
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