Voter fraud investigation into ex-Trump staffer Meadows: Group he heads sues over ballots
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A group headed by ex-White House Chief of Staff and former Western North Carolina Congressman Mark Meadows is suing officials in Pennsylvania over a ballot box "election integrity" issue, a move made at the same time that Meadows remains under investigation for voter fraud.
America First Legal Foundation – led by Meadows and former Donald Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller − is suing Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, elections officials over the use of ballot drop boxes on behalf of four county voters.
According to a news release by America First, "the lawsuit seeks to stop violations of Pennsylvania’s election law and instead restore election integrity prior to this November’s election."
Spokespeople from the organization did not respond to a Sept. 14 message from the Citizen Times.
Leigh Deputy Solicitor Sarah Murray, who is defending the elections officials, said while the case was active she could not talk about it, including whether it was problematic for Meadows to be a plaintiff in a election integrity case. September marks the sixth month of a North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation probe into Meadows. That comes after he voted absentee using the Macon County address of a single-wide mobile home he did not own and appears never to have visited.
"Thank you for reaching out. Unfortunately, I am not able to comment on pending litigation," Murray said in an email.
Meadows spokesperson Ben Williamson also declined to comment.
Voter fraud investigations, particularly those into where a person truly lives, can take time because of the "murkiness" of different states' rules on what it means to reside in a place, said Hans von Spakovsky, the manager of the conservative Heritage Foundation's Election Law Reform Initiative and a President George W. Bush appointee to the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division.
While residence might seem a cut-and-dried issue, it can often be hard to prove that someone did not live in a certain place.
"It's easy if it's not actually some place where you can live," Von Spakovsky said, citing the investigation of Kansas Democratic Congressman Steve Watkins who was convicted of three felonies for using a post office box as his home's address while voting in the wrong 2019 municipal election.
Other complications include that state voting regulators often give federal legislators and other government officials working in Washington some leeway in residence claims, since they spend much of their time away from their home state.
SBI spokesperson Anjanette Grube said on Sept. 14 that the investigation into Meadows was still underway but would not answer other questions about it.
Meadows voted using the address of the mobile home in 2020. It was that year that the Republican staffer helped push the idea that Trump lost the election to Joe Biden because of election fraud, something that was unproven and rebuked by courts and Trump's attorney general, William Barr.
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News broke of his use of the address to vote absentee with a March 6, 2022 story by the New Yorker.
Multiple residents of conservative Macon County interviewed by the Citizen Times said they did not believe Meadows ever lived at the home.
On March 17, the SBI announced its investigation. That followed a letter from District Attorney Ashley Hornsby-Welch — whose responsibilities include Macon County — to the N.C. Department of Justice recusing herself from the matter because of a campaign contribution she received from Meadows.
In April, Macon elections officials officially removed him from the voter list.
Soon after, Meadows, a top member of the Conservative Partnership Institute, has stopped speaking at CPI-sponsored statewide Election Integrity Summits. The summits show how to organize "citizen election integrity task forces" to check on people's voter records to ensure they live where they have registered.
Joel Burgess has lived in WNC for more than 20 years, covering politics, government and other news. He's written award-winning stories on topics ranging from gerrymandering to police use of force. Got a tip? Contact Burgess at jburgess@citizentimes.com, 828-713-1095 or on Twitter @AVLreporter.
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Voter fraud probe into Mark Meadows: Meadows' group sues over ballots
