A top White House aide who was part of the effort to overturn the 2020 election is now himself under investigation for voter fraud and was stripped from the voter rolls in his home state of North Carolina this week.
Mark Meadows, the final White House chief of staff under Donald Trump and a former congressman in the state, now could end up being the most high-profile case of voter fraud stemming from the 2020 election. State officials have already confirmed that he is under investigation, and confirmed to local news outlet WRAL on Wednesday that Mr Meadows’ name was removed from state voter lists on Monday.
"Macon County administratively removed the voter registration of Mark Meadows under [state law] as he lived in Virginia and last voted in the 2021 election there," Pat Gannon, a spokesman for the North Carolina Board of Elections, told WRAL.
North Carolina’s attorney general said last month that he had asked the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) to look in to the matter regarding whether Mr Meadows committed a crime when he registered to vote using the address of a mobile home in Scaly Mountain, North Carolina, for the 2020 election. Mr Meadows was described by the now-former owner of the property as never having actually stayed in the home.
An investigation from WRAL at the time confirmed that Mr Meadows’ absentee ballot had been mailed to a Washington DC address. State voting records show that his wife, Debra, is still registered to vote at the Scaly Mountain location.
The owners separately told The New Yorker that Debra Meadows had only rented the house for a few months, and only spent a few nights at the residence.
“He did not come. He’s never spent a night in there,” said the former owner.
State law deems it a felony to “fraudulently to cause or procure his name...to be placed upon the registration books in any precinct when such registration in that precinct does not qualify such person to vote legally therein”. Separately, the state’s Board of Elections requires state residents to “have resided [in the county in which they intend to vote] for at least 30 days prior to the date of the election”.
That could spell trouble for Mr Meadows if he cannot prove that he lived in North Carolina’s Macon County in 2020, when he was still serving as White House chief of staff to the president.
His former boss, Donald Trump, has continued to spread false claims about voter fraud which he and his allies insist propelled Joe Biden to the White House after Mr Biden won surprise victories in Arizona, Georgia, and overcame Mr Trump in other swing states as well.
Members of his legal team and campaign were never able to produce any tangible evidence of wide-scale fraud beyond sworn affidavits from people who claimed to have witnessed things they believed were improper.
