Strange saga of Meadows’ dream home
Certain images tattoo themselves on our brains and remain there without our permission, haunting us with nightmares or tickling us with delight. The latter kind is rare these days, but one I’ll relish for years comes from former House speaker John A. Boehner’s 2021 memoir.
In “On the House,” the Ohio Republican recalls a meeting with then-Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., who came to ask Boehner’s forgiveness for trying to oust him from the speakership. In addition to nearly ruining Boehner’s political life, Meadows and fellow members of the socalled Freedom Caucus bred chaos in the House and blocked everything Boehner tried to do, even to the point of shutting down the government in 2013.
Subsequently, Meadows apparently regretted his actions and literally got down on both knees in Boehner’s office to beg forgiveness. Surprised by this demonstration of contrition, Boehner later wrote, he wasn’t sure what to do with Meadows.
“I hadn’t expected to see a grown man huddled on the rug at my feet. So, I did the only thing that came to mind. I took a long, slow drag of my Camel cigarette. Let the tension hang there a little, you know?”
That, my friends, is an image worthy of popcorn.
Meadows, who went on to serve as Donald Trump’s last White House chief of staff, might soon be begging for mercy again if a formal investigation finds that he falsified his North Carolina residency just before the 2020 election. As first reported by Charles Bethea of the New Yorker, Meadows allegedly registered to vote in September of that year, listing his domicile as a mobile home in Scaly Mountain, N.C.
It seems, however, that he never bothered to live there.
The home’s former owner told the magazine that Meadows’ wife, Debra, had rented the property for a couple of months but that Meadows himself had “never spent a night.” The owner, who wasn’t identified in the story, also told the New Yorker that the home, despite improvements, “was not the kind of place you’d think the chief of staff of the president would be staying.”
At long last, ladies and gentlemen, we may finally have evidence of voter fraud in America — and it comes from the Trump White House, of all places. For the past two years, Meadows has echoed Trump’s assertions that the 2020 election was fraudulent and has spoken richly about voter corruption caused by “people just moving around.”
You mean, like Mr. and Mrs. Meadows did?
Records show a pattern of their house-selling and housebuying along an electoral timeline that ought to raise an eyebrow at least. In March 2020, the couple sold a house in Sapphire, N.C., for $370,000. That September, they claimed to have moved to Scaly Mountain to live in a 14-by-62-foot mobile home that sold for $105,000 in 2021. One can fairly wonder: Why? In previous years, they owned a 6,000square-foot house in Jackson County, North Carolina. And in 2021, the couple bought a South Carolina home for close to $1.6 million.
Like the lady said, a trailer with a rusted roof isn’t a likely fit for these two.
On voter registration forms, a residential address is “where you physically live,” which one signs “under penalty of perjury.” But at the time of his registration, Meadows also had a home near Washington, D.C., and perhaps needed a North Carolina residence so he could vote there. The rules seem clear enough even for Meadows, a man known for working harder to secure television appearances than governing. Perhaps he was overbooked and couldn’t make it “home” to Scaly Mountain — except to vote.
If he’s charged with perjury and/or voter fraud, it may not be Meadows’ only rendezvous with justice. The House voted late last year to hold Meadows in contempt of Congress and to refer him to the Justice Department for a possible criminal charge over his refusal to respond to questions about the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
If Meadows never spent the night at his pretend home up a mountain in North Carolina, he might have done more to obstruct election integrity than to correct the slack in the system and the gaps in the laws.
Loss of confidence in our elections is no small thing. Both liberals and conservatives list election integrity in the top four or five issues of greatest concern, according to Jason Snead, executive director of the nonpartisan Honest Elections Project. When politicians abuse the very system they purport to protect — or otherwise benefit by claiming fraud where none exists — they deserve no leniency from the courts or the public.
Even if what Meadows is alleged to have done may seem minor in the scheme of things, such actions pose a real threat to election integrity and therefore democracy. Next time Meadows gets down on his knees, he might do best to pray. I gave up cigarettes long ago, but I’d gladly toast the former speaker with a merlot of his choice.