Wife of Mark Meadows appears to have used invalid address on North Carolina voter forms
By Dianne Gallagher and Wesley Bruer, CNN
Debra Meadows, the wife of former congressman and Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, signed voter forms attesting she resided at a Macon County, North Carolina, mobile home that reports indicate the couple never lived in.
On registration forms, both Debra and Mark Meadows indicated their residency at the Scaly Mountain mobile home would begin September 20, 2020 — one day after their voter registration forms were dated.
The North Carolina voter registration form instructs a person to provide their residential address — “where you physically live.” It is signed “under penalty of perjury.” A person is also required to check a box indicating whether they have lived at the address for 30 or more days. If not, a person must list the date they moved to that residence. Both Mark and Debra Meadows checked “no” and listed September 20, 2020.
The Washington Post first reported details about Debra Meadows’ voter forms.
Last week, the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation confirmed to CNN that its Special Investigations Unit is investigating allegations that Mark Meadows registered to vote in 2020 at a home where he never resided. The investigation is being carried out in conjunction with the North Carolina State Board of Elections.
In response to a question Wednesday from CNN whether Debra Meadows is also under investigation, the State Bureau of Investigations said it is “early into this ongoing investigation” and as it moves forward “information will be shared with the prosecutor who will make a determination as to whether any additional persons could be subject to the investigation.”
The Macon County district attorney’s office deferred comment to the state attorney general’s office. The North Carolina State Board of Elections referred all questions pertaining to the investigation to the SBI.
A spokesman for Mark Meadows declined to comment. CNN has also reached out to Debra Meadows via her email with Right Women PAC, for which she is the executive director.
The investigation followed a report in The New Yorker magazine that Meadows registered to vote weeks before the 2020 election at a mobile home in Macon County, where he allegedly never lived or even visited.
The article quoted the unnamed former owner of the McConnell Road property in Scaly Mountain as saying that Meadows’ wife “reserved the house for two months at some point within the past few years — she couldn’t remember exactly when — but only spent one or two nights there” and that Meadows himself had never even “spent a night in there.”
Debra Meadows voted early in person — known as one-stop voting in North Carolina — in Macon County in the 2020 general election. The box on her one-stop application certifying that she was a registered voter in the county and had “resided at the address noted above for 30 days immediately prior this election” was checked. The address listed is the Scaly Mountain mobile home. At the top of the form, it warns that “fraudulently or falsely completely this form is a Class 1 Felony.” Debra Meadows signed the one-stop application on October 26, 2020, the same day state records show she dropped off her husband’s absentee ballot.
An absentee ballot request form for Mark Meadows was submitted the first week of October 2020, with a request to send the ballot to an Alexandria, Virginia, address. The signature on that form is redacted; however, North Carolina State Board of Elections spokesperson Patrick Gannon told CNN that the signature says Mark Meadows. Gannon said it is not clear why Debra Meadows’ information is included in a section for requesting an absentee ballot for a relative. There is also a warning on the absentee ballot request form that “fraudulently or falsely completing this form is a Class 1 felony”.
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CNN’s Gabby Orr contributed to this report.