2 years ago
North Carolina state investigators have launched an investigation into Mark Meadows’ voter registration after reports raised questions about the former White House chief of staff’s status.
Anjanette Grube, the public information director for the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, told POLITICO that Meadows was under investigation, which was first reported by Raleigh TV station WRAL. WRAL also reported that the North Carolina State Board of Elections was investigating Meadows, but the office referred POLITICO to the state’s attorney general’s office.
A state Department of Justice spokesperson, Nazneen Ahmed, also confirmed the NCSBI’s investigation but did not answer questions regarding the State Board of Elections investigation. Ahmed said Macon County District Attorney Ashley Welch referred the matter to the Department of Justice’s Special Prosecutions Section, which accepted the case and asked the NCSBI to investigate. The North Carolina Department of Justice will then review their findings.
A Meadows spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the investigations.
Public records show that Meadows is registered to vote in two states, North Carolina and Virginia. Meadows, also a former congressman from western North Carolina, registered to vote at a mobile home in Scaly Mountain, N.C., for the 2020 election — a property he has never owned and possibly never visited, according to The New Yorker, which first reported his voter registration status. Meadows and his wife voted in North Carolina in 2020 through absentee ballots mailed to the Washington, D.C., area.
The former chief of staff to President Donald Trump played a role in spreading Trump's lies about mass voter fraud. And now critics are accusing Meadows of committing voter fraud himself.
The former owner of the property where Meadows is registered to vote said the former chief of staff had never owned the home, The New Yorker reported. While Meadows’ wife rented the property for two months in the past few years, she spent only a couple of nights there. Neighbors said Meadows was never at the home.
Meadows frequently pedaled falsehoods about the 2020 election, suggesting Joe Biden was not the legitimate winner of the presidential race. He also repeats this baseless claim in his new memoir. From judges to election officials to Trump’s own attorney general, William Barr, it has been concluded that there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud.
It is illegal, however, to provide false information on one’s voter registration. Americans, while they can have multiple residences, can have only one official address, which is linked to the voter registration. Under North Carolina voter registration requirements, a person must have resided in a county for at least 30 days before the date of the election.
English (US)