North Carolina investigating Mark Meadows for alleged voter fraud

MACON COUNTY, N.C. - The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation has opened a probe into potential voter fraud by former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows after a Republican Western North Carolina district attorney passed the case on to the state.

District Attorney Ashley Welch asked the North Carolina Department of Justice to consider the matter after she was contacted by media outlets about the Macon County voter registration of Meadows, a former top staffer for President Donald Trump and western NC congressman.

Meadows, who was a key proponent of the court-rejected claims that widespread voter fraud cost Trump the election, registered and voted using the address of a single-wide Macon County mobile home where owners and neighbors say he never lived or visited.

Attorney General Josh Stein's office said March 17 he had asked the SBI to look into Meadows' voter registration after Welch's request, according to DOJ spokesperson Nazneen Ahmed.

"Local district attorney Ashley Welch has referred this matter to the Department of Justice's Special Prosecutions Section, and we have agreed to her request. We have asked the SBI to investigate and at the conclusion of the investigation, we'll review their findings," Ahmed said.

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In a March 14 letter, Welch said that she would recuse herself from the matter. She noted that Meadows, a former congressman from the area, contributed to her campaign for DA and appeared in political ads endorsing her.

She also said she had no knowledge of the case until it was reported in the media.

“Until being contacted by the media, I was unaware of any allegations of voter fraud surrounding Mark Meadows,” she said

Welch's office released the letter March 17 and declined further comment.

A spokesman for Meadows didn’t immediately return a March 17 email seeking comment.

WRAL-TV first reported that state authorities are investigating Meadows' voter registration.

Public records show that Meadows is registered to vote in two states, including North Carolina, where he listed a mobile home he did not own as his legal residence weeks before casting a ballot in the 2020 presidential election.

Meadows listed a mobile home in Scaly Mountain, North Carolina, as his physical address on Sept. 19, 2020, while he was serving as Trump’s chief of staff in Washington, D.C.

Meadows later cast an absentee ballot for the general election by mail. Trump won the battleground state by just over 1 percentage point.

The New Yorker, which first reported the questions about Meadows' voter registration, interviewed the current and former owner of the Scaly Mountain property. The previous owner said Meadows’ wife rented the property “for two months at some point within the past few years” but only spent one or two nights there. Neighbors said Meadows was never present, The New Yorker reported.

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Public records indicate Meadows registered to vote in Alexandria, Virginia, almost exactly one year after he registered in Scaly Mountain and just weeks before Virginia’s high-profile governor’s election last fall.

Meadows frequently raised the prospect of voter fraud before the 2020 presidential election, as polls showed Trump trailing Joe Biden, and in the months following Trump’s loss to suggest Biden was not the legitimate winner. He repeated those baseless claims that the election was stolen in his 2021 memoir.

A Black North Carolina woman who was prosecuted for voting while on probation for a felony has called for Meadows to face similar prosecution. Critics say the felon disenfranchisement law is racist with roots in the post Civil War era where whites in power sought to keep Black from voting.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Ex-Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows probed for alleged voter fraud