By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. state of North Carolina will not charge former Republican President Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows with voter fraud, the state’s Justice Department said on Friday.
In April, North Carolina removed Meadows from the voter roll after state authorities said they were investigating his voter registration. Meadows has previously echoed Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.
“After a thorough review, my office has concluded that there is not sufficient evidence to bring charges against either of them (Meadows and his wife) in this matter,” North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein said in a statement.
The investigation was in response to claims in a New Yorker magazine report that Meadows, who represented North Carolina in Congress from 2013 until joining the Trump administration in 2020, registered to vote in September 2020 with an address at which he did not reside, own or visit.
In North Carolina, voters must live in the county where they are registering and have resided there for at least 30 days prior to the election date, according to the state elections board website.
Separately, this month when the House of Representatives panel that probed the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol asked federal prosecutors to charge Trump, it named Meadows as participating in conspiracies the committee linked to the former president.
Recently released transcript by the committee also showed that former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson had testified that Meadows was seen burning documents roughly a dozen times in the period between President Joe Biden’s election and his inauguration. Hutchison said she did not know what the documents were.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Josie Kao)
