Former North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows was one of the 19 people indicted Monday by an Atlanta grand jury as part of a plan to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia.
North Carolina native Sidney Powell, an attorney who represented former President Donald Trump in the turbulent days after the election, was also indicted.
Meadows, a Republican, represented western North Carolina in Congress from 2013 to 2020 before becoming Trump’s chief of staff.
As part of the 41-count indictment that alleges a criminal enterprise to overturn the election, Meadows faces two felony charges: racketeering and solicitation of violation of oath of a public officer.
Prosecutors say Meadows met twice with Trump and aide John McEntee to outline a strategy for “disrupting and delaying” the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, the day Congress certified the election.
The indictment says the plan was to have Vice President Mike Pence count only half of the electoral votes from certain states and then return the remaining votes to state legislatures.
It’s the first time Meadows has faced criminal charges.
The indictment also says that on Dec. 22, 2020, Meadows went to the Cobb County Civic Center and attempted to observe the signature-match audit being performed by law enforcement and Georgia’s secretary of state's office. It says he was prevented from entering the area where the audit occurred; the indictment says his efforts were in “furtherance of the conspiracy.”
A day later, on Dec. 23, Meadows arranged a phone call between Trump and Georgia's secretary of state's chief investigator Frances Watson, in which Trump stated that he had won the election in Georgia by “hundreds of thousands of votes” and “when the right answer comes you’ll be praised.”
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis brought the charges against Trump and the others. She launched her investigation after a tape of a phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was made public after the election. During the call, Trump asked him to change the election results in Georgia.
Powell is an attorney who grew up in Raleigh and is a graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill. She famously said she would “release the Kraken” in her efforts to expose what she said was wrongdoing in the 2020 election.
She faces seven charges, including racketeering and two counts of conspiracy to commit election fraud.
The indictment says that on Jan. 7, 2021, she “willfully and unlawfully” tampered with electronic ballet markets and tabulating machines in Coffee County, Georgia.
She is also accused of lying under oath to Congress on May 7, 2022.