# Mark Meadows Trump's White House Chief of Staff during the critical period of [[Stop the Steal]] (March 2020 – January 2021) — the figure who sat at the operational center of the coup attempt, connecting the White House to the legal team, the rally organizers, the state pressure campaigns, and the media operation. Meadows's text messages, turned over to the [[Jan 6 Committee]], became the single most important documentary record of how the operation functioned day-to-day. ## Background - **Born**: 1959, Verdun, France (military family) - **Career**: U.S. Representative from North Carolina (2013-2020), co-founder of the House Freedom Caucus - **Freedom Caucus**: The hardline conservative House faction that Meadows co-founded and chaired — the institutional base for MAGA within Congress - **White House Chief of Staff**: March 2020 – January 2021 (replaced [[Mick Mulvaney]]) ## Role in Stop the Steal Meadows was the **operational switchboard** — the person through whom all the different Stop the Steal threads ran: ### The Raffensperger Call (January 2, 2021) Meadows arranged and participated in Trump's infamous call to Georgia Secretary of State [[Brad Raffensperger]], in which Trump said "I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have." Meadows was on the call along with [[Cleta Mitchell]] (conservative election lawyer). Raffensperger's team recorded the call. This call is the most direct evidence of the president personally pressuring a state official to overturn an election result — and Meadows was the chief of staff who set it up. ### The Text Message Record The Jan 6 Committee obtained thousands of Meadows's text messages, which revealed: | Correspondent | Content | |---------------|---------| | **[[Sean Hannity]]** | Hannity texted Meadows during Jan 6 urging Trump to stop the violence — while his show had spent weeks amplifying fraud claims | | **[[Laura Ingraham]]** | Texted Meadows "Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. He is destroying his legacy" — while her show promoted Stop the Steal | | **[[Members of Congress Hub]]** | Multiple Republican members texted about the fake electors scheme, rally planning, and post-election strategy | | **[[Ginni Thomas]]** | Supreme Court Justice [[Clarence Thomas]]'s wife texted Meadows 29 times about overturning the election, including "Help This Great President stand firm" and references to Sidney Powell's conspiracy theories | | **Various Trump allies** | The texts mapped the full communication network of the Stop the Steal operation in real time | The Meadows texts are structurally important because they proved that [[Fox News]] hosts privately acknowledged the danger of Stop the Steal while publicly promoting it, and that a Supreme Court justice's spouse was actively lobbying the White House to overturn an election — raising recusal questions that were never resolved. ### The [[Jeffrey Clark]] Connection Meadows was involved in Trump's effort to install Jeffrey Clark — a mid-level DOJ official sympathetic to election fraud claims — as Acting Attorney General, replacing the acting AG who refused to send false fraud letters to state officials. This plan was only abandoned when the entire senior DOJ leadership threatened mass resignation. ## Georgia RICO Indictment Meadows was indicted in the Fulton County RICO case for his role in the Raffensperger call and the broader effort to overturn Georgia's election results. He attempted to have his case removed to federal court (arguing his actions were taken in his official capacity as chief of staff), which was initially denied. ## The Cooperation Question Meadows's relationship with federal prosecutors has been one of the most closely watched elements of the post-Jan 6 legal landscape. Reports in 2023-2024 indicated he had provided testimony to special counsel [[Jack Smith]]'s team, potentially as a cooperating witness — though the scope and nature of his cooperation remained unclear as Trump's return to the presidency effectively mooted the federal cases. ## See Also - [[Stop the Steal]] - [[January 6 Capitol Attack]] - [[Sean Hannity]] - [[Laura Ingraham]] - [[Rudy Giuliani]] - [[John Eastman]] - [[Heritage Foundation]]