North Carolina state officials are investigating Mark Meadows, former President Donald Trump’s chief of staff during his last year in office, over alleged voter fraud in the 2020 election.
The Washington Post reported on Thursday that Meadows is under investigation after it was reported that he listed an address he did not own as his residence when he registered to vote.
Anjanette Grube, public information director for the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, confirmed that an investigation was underway to the Post.
Nazneen Ahmed, press secretary for the North Carolina Department of Justice, said in a statement, “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 added.
The investigation comes after The New Yorker reported earlier this month that Meadows sold his home in North Carolina in early 2020. But roughly three weeks before the state deadline to register to vote, he had not bought a new home and listed an address that he did not own and may never have even stayed a night as his residence.
Why would Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, risk committing voter fraud by listing as his domicile the address of a mobile home where he apparently never slept?https://t.co/nStCOuA5Ff
— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) March 18, 2022
According to the outlet, “On a line that asked for his residential address—’where you physically live,’ the form instructs—Meadows wrote down the address of a fourteen-by-sixty-two-foot mobile home in Scaly Mountain. He listed his move-in date for this address as the following day, September 20th.”
“Meadows does not own this property and never has. It is not clear that he has ever spent a single night there,” it added.
The Washington Post notes:
“It is illegal to provide false information on a voter registration, and while Americans can have multiple residences, they can have only one official domicile, which is tied to their voter registration. To register to vote in North Carolina, a citizen must have lived in the county where they are registering and have resided there for at least 30 days before the date of the election, according to the state’s board of elections.”
Trump has claimed that widespread fraud cost him his reelection bid. However, several recounts and legal challenges failed to change the outcome of the election or find evidence to substantiate his claims.
The Post’s fact-checker argued that it was “jarring” that Meadows had decried the possibility of voter fraud during the election while engaging in “such fishy behavior.”
