Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff and a former Republican representative from North Carolina, was one of 17 people charged alongside former President Donald Trump on Monday night with conspiracy and other counts related to efforts to keep Trump in power after the 2020 election.
In 2021, congressional hearings into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol revealed that Meadows had repeatedly pushed the Justice Department to conduct investigations based on Trump’s unfounded conspiracy theories about the election.
In several emails sent at the end of 2020, Meadows asked Jeffrey Rosen, then the acting attorney general, to look into debunked claims of election fraud in New Mexico, as well as an array of baseless theories that Trump had been the actual winner of the election.
He was also deeply involved in Trump’s efforts in Georgia, prosecutors have said.
According to filings from the office of the Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney, Fani Willis, Meadows acknowledged that he had attended a meeting at the White House on Dec. 21, 2020, with Trump, members of Congress and others to discuss allegations of voter fraud in the state.
The next day, Meadows made a surprise visit to Cobb County, Georgia, in an attempt to observe an election audit that was in progress. He was told by local officials that he was not authorized to be in the room.
Meadows also spoke with Frances Watson, the chief investigator for Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, who was conducting an inquiry into ballot signatures in Cobb County. A day later, Trump phoned Watson, and told her that “when the right answer comes out, you’ll be praised.”
Prosecutors have said that a special grand jury that investigated the matter had evidence showing that Meadows had set up another notable call: the recorded conversation on Jan. 2, 2021, in which Trump can be heard telling Raffensperger that he wanted to “find 11,780 votes” that would allow him to win in Georgia.
In a material witness certificate seeking Meadows’ testimony, Judge Robert C.I. McBurney of the Fulton County Superior Court noted that Meadows also “actively participated in and spoke” during the call.
Meadows, who is a South Carolina resident, was ordered to testify last year before the special grand jury in Georgia by the South Carolina Supreme Court after trying to fight off subpoenas ordering him to testify.
The South Carolina Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s ruling, writing in a three-paragraph opinion that Meadow’s arguments were “manifestly without merit.”
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