N. Carolina AG to weigh charges in Meadows voter fraud case

The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation said it has submitted to state prosecutors the findings of its voter fraud probe into Mark Meadows, a former White House chief of staff to President Donald Trump, who was simultaneously registered to vote in North Carolina and two other states earlier this year.

The State Bureau of Investigation announced Tuesday that it has turned over the case file detailing its investigation into Meadows' North Carolina voter registration and listed residence to Attorney General Josh Stein's office. Prosecutors with the attorney general's office will determine whether criminal charges are appropriate, the bureau said in a statement.

Meadows, a former Republican North Carolina congressman, was removed from the state's voter rolls in April after Stein's office asked the bureau to examine his voter registration records. He had listed a mobile home Scaly Mountain, North Carolina, that he never owned as his physical address weeks before casting an absentee by-mail ballot in the state for the 2020 presidential election. Trump won the Southern swing state that year by just over 1 percentage point.

A representative for Meadows did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Public records indicate Meadows registered to vote in Alexandria, Virginia, in 2021, a year after he registered in North Carolina and just weeks before Virginia’s pivotal gubernatorial election in which Gov. Glenn Youngkin became the first Republican to win statewide office in a dozen years.

An outspoken proponent of Trump's baseless claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, Meadows also registered to vote in South Carolina in March 2022 after he and his wife purchased a $1.6 million home on Lake Keowee, according to records for the address listed on their South Carolina voter registration forms.

The Trump ally began arousing public suspicion of widespread voter fraud leading up to the 2020 general election as the polls showed Trump trailing President Joe Biden. He repeated those unfounded claims throughout the election cycle and in the aftermath of the race as Trump insisted the election was rife with fraud.

Election officials from both parties, as well as judges and Trump’s own attorney general, concluded there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, noting only a few isolated incidents of intentional or unintentional voting violations common in every election.

Stein’s office, which received the final case file from state investigators in November, declined to comment on its progress.

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Hannah Schoenbaum is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.