- Meadows used his own cellphone, two personal Gmail accounts, and Signal for government business.
- That's according to a report released Sunday by the House committee investigating the Capitol riot.
- The committee is expected to vote on Monday to hold Meadows in contempt for defying its subpoena.
The committee released a 51-page report detailing why it should hold Meadows in criminal contempt for defying its subpoena and cited a slew of documents Meadows turned over to the panel when he was cooperating with the inquiry. The bipartisan committee is expected to vote on the contempt charge on Monday night.
The panel wrote that Meadows, who served as chief of staff from March 2020 to the end of Trump's term, used his own cellphone and two personal email accounts to communicate about "official business related to his service as White House chief of staff." He also sent messages through Signal, an encrypted-messaging app, the report said.
Government officials are required to use government-issued accounts and devices to communicate about their work or forward any private messages to their government accounts for public transparency and accountability purposes.
Meadows wouldn't be the only powerful Trump administration official to appear to violate these rules. Several top Trump White House officials were found to have used their personal accounts and devices to communicate about government business. And first lady Melania Trump also used private email accounts to conduct government business, her former advisor Stephanie Winston Wolkoff told The Washington Post.
Meadows' and other Trump officials' private communications are particularly notable given the former president's aggressive campaign against Hillary Clinton for using a private email server while serving as secretary of state.
"We would ask Mr. Meadows about his efforts to preserve those documents and provide them to the National Archives, as required by the Presidential Records Act," the committee wrote.
Meadows provided emails and text messages, the committee said, showing how integral he was in Trump's efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The committee said it wanted to question Meadows about his communications and actions surrounding the Capitol attack.
In one January 5 email, Meadows said the National Guard would be stationed at the Capitol the next day to "protect pro Trump people" attending the planned rally protesting the election's outcome, according to the committee.
Meadows published a book, "The Chief's Chief," earlier this month detailing his time in the White House and promoting a slew of unsubstantiated claims about the 2020 election, which he said was stolen by Democrats through widespread voter fraud. After briefly cooperating with the House committee, the former Republican congressman from North Carolina abruptly changed course last week and refused to be deposed by the panel.
"Mr. Meadows has shown his willingness to talk about issues related to the Select Committee's investigation across a variety of media platforms — anywhere, it seems, except to the Select Committee," the committee wrote in the report.
The House planned to vote on the resolution to hold Meadows in contempt — and thus subjecting him to prosecution by the Department of Justice — on Monday.
- related -
RALEIGH, N.C. — 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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