On Wednesday, WRAL reported that state officials in North Carolina are considering criminal charges against former President Donald Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, for voter fraud.
“Meadows voted in North Carolina’s 2020 general election,” reported Bryan Anderson. “He was registered to vote in the state using an address of a rented western North Carolina mobile home. But he purportedly never stayed at the property, according to the former owner of the Scaly Mountain property. Documents obtained through a public records request show Meadows asked for absentee ballots in that election to be delivered to an address in the Washington, D.C., area.”
“State law says voter registration applications must be accurate and that residency refers to ‘where you physically live,'” said the report. “A voter who purposefully provides inaccurate information could be subject to several months of jail time if found guilty.”
Meadows’ unusual voting arrangement was first reported in March by The New Yorker. State Attorney General Josh Stein subsequently ordered the State Bureau of Investigation to look into the matter. Meadows was also registered to vote in South Carolina, and in 2021 voted in Virginia, at which point local officials removed him from the North Carolina rolls.
“The SBI on Tuesday announced it handed the voter fraud case over to Stein’s office in early November. The SBI declined to provide the case file to WRAL, saying it wasn’t a public record due to the active criminal investigation,” said the report. “‘Prosecutors with the AG’s Office will determine whether criminal charges are appropriate, not the SBI,’ the state investigative bureau said in a statement. ‘Because the case is now pending a decision by the AG’s Office, no additional information is available.'”
Meadows was a key figure pushing conspiracy theories about rigged elections in the immediate aftermath of the 2020 election. On the urging of far-right Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), Meadows even leaned on the Justice Department to investigate “Italygate,” a baseless hoax that Italian satellites were being used to remotely hack U.S. voting machines and block votes for Trump.
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