On Wednesday, Rolling Stone reported that it has learned the Jan. 6 committee is “quietly probing” the financial dealings of Mark Meadows, former President Donald Trump’s chief of staff.
Meadows has been walking a rocky road since he abruptly stopped cooperating with the committee last year and triggered a criminal contempt referral to the Department of Justice. Though that referral wasn’t taken up by Attorney General Merrick Garland, scrutiny on Meadows remains. He is presently under investigation for voter fraud in at least three states including North Carolina, Virginia, and South Carolina after it was discovered in March that he registered to vote in states where he held no residential address.
RELATED STORY: Not one, not two, but three states Mark Meadows registered to vote in
And then there are those pesky donations.
During its very first hearing, the committee’s senior investigative counsel, Amanda Wick, highlighted how the Trump campaign sent out email blasts—including up to just 30 minutes before the Capitol assault—asking for donations to support Trump’s many lawsuits baselessly alleging fraud in the 2020 election.
But that fund, dubbed the Official Election Defense Fund, didn’t exist. Instead, the $250 million Trump racked up from donors by lying to them about the election results went flowing into other entities, like his very own Save America PAC. Funds that went to that PAC were then routed to a variety of Trump-backed or Trump-related think tanks like the America First Policy institute and the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI). Both groups received $1 million from the bogus legal defense fund propped up by Trump’s campaign
Meadows is a senior partner at CPI.
Campaign Action
Though the Rolling Stone article was light on details around the committee’s review of Meadows' finances, it did note that the committee has “asked some witnesses specific questions about Meadows’ financial arrangements with other Trump advisers who sought to overturn President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory.”
This could be an indicator that the committee is probing whether any “dubious payments” were made to Meadows.
One unnamed source who was described as a current legal adviser to former President Trump said Meadows was marked for trouble.
“Mark is gonna get pulverized … and it’s really sad. Based on talking to [Meadows in the past, it felt like] he doesn’t actually believe any of this [election-theft] stuff, or at least not most of it. He was obviously just trying to perform for Trump, and now he’s maybe screwed himself completely.”
RELATED STORY: Jan. 6 committee follows the money, builds fraud case against Trump and team in the ‘Big Rip-Off’
Meadows’ role in the days and weeks leading up to the insurrection at the Capitol has been pored over by witnesses and investigators. During the committee’s sixth hearing, Meadows’ former aide, Cassidy Hutchinson, testified that he was dismissive with her when she initially raised the alarm about prospective violence in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6.
That shifted by Jan. 2. Hutchinson said that Meadows would warn her explicitly: “Things might get real, real bad on Jan. 6.” This caveat came after a meeting Meadows had with Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and Giuliani gushed to her: “We’re going to the Capitol, it’s going to be great. The president is going to be there. He’s going to look powerful.”
Meadows has a long track record in Washington for being an ambitious double-dealer and is often regarded as untrustworthy by many of those inside elite political circles.
During an appearance on CNN Tuesday night following the hearings, former Trump White House director of strategic communications Alyssa Farah Griffin said that Meadows once told her Trump might stay in power despite losing to Biden.
When he decided to stay in Washington after Christmas 2020, Griffin said, that was a sign that Trump was going “fight it out.”