For The Washington Post

RFK Supreme Court

The Washington Post

Supreme Court of the United States

Photographer

Capitol Riot Sentencing

Supreme Court

Trump NYC Court

Special Prosecutor Jack Smith addresses reporters after his grand jury has issued more indictments of former President Donald Trump on August 01 in Washington, DC.

Senate convenes as work expected to continue on bipartisan immigration and foreign aid bill, Washington, USA - 05 Feb 2024

Trump DC Court

for The Washington Post

Appeals court hearing in former U.S. President Trump's 2020 election subversion case is held at District Court in Washington

Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

Ask Amy: My boyfriend just confessed he’s almost $20,000 in debt

Miss Manners: Is it inappropriate to reach out to old girlfriends?

Carolyn Hax: Longtime friend won’t forgive being last-minute canceled for a guy

The Post endorses April McClain Delaney and Tom Royals for Maryland’s 6th District

On Press Freedom Day, little to celebrate for Hong Kong’s journalists

Young Georgians want to be part of Europe. Their government is in the way.

The New York Times, alone in its outrage over access to Biden

The ‘Access Hollywood’ video cemented Trump’s air of invincibility

Stephen A. Smith would like even more of your attention

Strangers help Sesame Street puppeteer after heirloom necklace was stolen

Teen grabs wheel when driver passes out and school bus veers into traffic

Cat climbed into Amazon return box, found alive 630 miles away

Confident of victory over Ukraine, Russia exhibits Western war trophies

Two women are seeking Mexico’s presidency. But the race is about a man.

Hamas in Cairo for hostage talks as Israel briefs aid agencies on Rafah

Trump Media auditor charged by SEC with ‘massive fraud’

Google’s empire is massive. A judge will soon rule if it’s a monopoly.

Five tech products we actually like

Biden confronts campus protests; Trump hedges on accepting election results

Kristi Noem just won’t stop talking about killing her dog

Noem’s dog-killing isn’t popular, though Trump supporters are divided

In a pinch, the Nationals finally find some offense

Is Pastis as good as our food critic thought? He sent spies to find out.

The Capitals, a team in transition, know what they want this offseason

In photos: At least 39 dead as historic flooding hits southern Brazil

Sea level rise brings new era of dangerous flooding

Michael Cohen keeps broadcasting despite being a witness

The new cure-all for vacation excess: the IV drip 

What’s the best bus to New York? We tested 5 for comfort and value.

Adaptive equipment is making national parks more inclusive

See more coverage in your recommendations

Get the weekly Campaign Moment newsletter

Set alerts for major election developments

Election 2024

The Campaign Moment newsletter

Politics alerts

Jabin Botsford

A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Mark Meadows' December 2020 text message had not previously been publicly reported. This story has been updated to show that the text is included in the final report of the House Committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack.

Mark Meadows joked about the baseless claim that large numbers of votes were fraudulently cast in the names of dead people in the days before the then-White House chief of staff participated in a phone call in which President <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/donald-trump/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Donald Trump</a> alleged there were close to 5,000 dead voters in Georgia and urged Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, to overturn the 2020 election there.

In a text message that has been scrutinized by federal prosecutors, Meadows wrote to a White House lawyer that his son, Atlanta-area attorney Blake Meadows, had been probing possible fraud and had found only a handful of possible votes cast in dead voters’ names, far short of what Trump was alleging. The lawyer teasingly responded that perhaps Meadows’s son could locate the thousands of votes Trump would need to win the election. The text was described by multiple people familiar with the exchange.

The jocular text message is one of many exchanges from the time in which Trump aides and other Republican officials expressed deep skepticism or even openly mocked the election claims being made publicly by Trump, according to people familiar with the investigation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the criminal investigation.

The exchange was included in <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-J6-REPORT/pdf/GPO-J6-REPORT.pdf" target=_blank>the final report</a> of the House Committee that investigated the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/january-6-capitol-riot/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Jan. 6</a> attack, released last year. Federal prosecutors’ interest in the message has not been previously reported.

Special counsel Jack Smith, who is <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/07/18/trump-jan6-target-letter/" target=_blank>leading a Justice Department investigation of Trump’s activities</a> in the weeks leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, has focused on exploring whether Trump and his closest advisers understood that claims of fraud in the election were baseless, even as they pressed state officials and others to overturn Biden’s victory and convinced Trump’s millions of supporters that the election had been stolen, people familiar with the probe have said.

HyoJung Kim

The text message is a small part of a broader portrait of Meadows that Smith appears to be assembling as he weighs the actions of not just Trump but a number of his closest advisers, including Meadows.

People close to Meadows have said that he was privately sympathetic to those Trump advisers who were skeptical of the fraud claims. Yet Meadows also played both sides, often appearing to indulge Trump’s desire to use those false allegations to try to remain in office, people who witnessed his behavior have said.

A spokesman for Meadows declined to comment. Blake Meadows did not respond to a request for comment.

Since Trump said he was named a target of Smith’s investigation earlier this week, his allies have been feverishly speculating about the degree of Meadows’s cooperation with the Smith probe and whether he has provided testimony that Smith will use to build a case against Trump or others.

The Meadows text, which a person familiar with the investigation said prosecutors have presented to a grand jury, is a reminder that Smith will probably offer the public the fullest picture yet available of the events that led to the Jan. 6 attack.

A spokesman for Smith declined to comment.

Days after Meadows sent the text, he organized the Raffensperger call on Jan. 2, in which Trump <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-raffensperger-call-georgia-vote/2021/01/03/d45acb92-4dc4-11eb-bda4-615aaefd0555_story.html" target=_blank>pressed to </a>“find” the votes in the state necessary to overturn Biden’s victory.

A recording of the call shows that Meadows did not interject or challenge Trump’s claims about votes cast in the name of dead people. Instead, when Raffensperger countered that state investigators had found just two such votes, he <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-raffensperger-call-transcript-georgia-vote/2021/01/03/2768e0cc-4ddd-11eb-83e3-322644d82356_story.html" target=_blank>responded</a>: “That may be what your investigation shows, but I can promise you there are more than that.”

Meadows expended particular energy after the 2020 vote on Georgia, a traditionally Republican-leaning state that Biden won by nearly 12,000 votes, former White House officials and campaign aides said. Meadows lobbied other officials in the state about the election results and even visited a ballot-counting center in Georgia, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-republicans-election-fight/2020/12/22/fa0c2744-446b-11eb-b0e4-0f182923a025_story.html" target=_blank>The Washington Post has reported</a>.

In the weeks after the election, Trump advisers said they received claims that came from Meadows that the election was fraudulent, but when they checked the claims with outside experts paid by the Trump campaign, they could not substantiate them, according to people familiar with the requests.

Meadows, a former member of Congress who became Trump’s chief of staff in early 2020, was viewed inside the White House and the campaign as one of the biggest propagators of such claims — though at times he also entertained concerns from other Trump advisers who wanted the president to accept his election loss.

It is not clear how extensively Blake Meadows looked for instances of fraud in Georgia or what his father concluded about his findings.

Blake Meadows interned for a North Carolina Supreme Court justice and worked for his father’s campaign for Congress and a Republican political group called the Alliance Defending Freedom, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/blake-meadows-b64430ab/details/experience/" target=_blank>according to his LinkedIn profile</a>. He is now managing partner of his own firm in Tyrone, Ga.

Witnesses have been asked detailed questions about why Meadows appeared so deeply interested in the Georgia election results and about his various phone calls with Georgia officials and other activities in the state, three people familiar with testimony said.

The Justice Department obtained hundreds of Meadows’s texts in the summer of 2022, which were then shared with Smith’s team after the special counsel was appointed in November, according to two other people familiar with the probe. Meadows subsequently turned over additional documents to Smith’s office in response to a subpoena, according to people familiar with his activities.

Witnesses who have appeared in front of a Washington grand jury investigating Jan. 6 say prosecutors appear to have an extensive collection of Meadows’s text messages and emails, with one witness describing being shown a “grid” displaying the communications.

This spring, Meadows testified to the grand jury about his interactions with Trump and others involved with Trump’s election effort, two people with knowledge of the appearance said.

After leaving the White House, Meadows joined the Conservative Partnership Institute, where he has helped the group raise money and amass real estate for a larger office complex on Capitol Hill. He has kept in touch with some of his aides from the White House.

People in Trump’s orbit have grown increasingly concerned about what they see as Meadows’s retreat from the public scene as a prominent defender of the former president. He has reduced his public appearances, particularly on television — where he was once a frequent guest. He has not posted on Twitter in five months.

Trump has repeatedly complained to others about Meadows and questioned his loyalty, according to three Trump advisers. A spokesman for Trump declined to comment about Meadows.

Trump’s relationship with his former chief of staff soured after Meadows published a book about his time in the White House last year that generally praised Trump but also included details about how sick Trump became when he contracted covid-19 in October 2020, a description of personal vulnerability that has angered Trump. That included insider information about Trump’s three-day stay at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center recovering from the virus, where Meadows joined him.

Research for the book, “The Chief’s Chief,” also appeared to help a separate Smith investigation into Trump’s handling of classified documents after leaving office. Investigators obtained audio of Trump talking about what he said was a classified document with ghostwriters for Meadows, as papers rustle.

A person close to Meadows said he knows his relationship with Trump is permanently ruptured and has told others he does not seek to antagonize Trump and his supporters but concluded he had to cooperate with Smith’s office as required by law.

— Perry Stein contributed to this report.

A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the date of Donald Trump's call with the Georgia secretary of state. It was Jan. 2, 2021.

White House Correspondents Award for Deadline Reporting

University of South Carolina

Josh Dawsey is a political enterprise and investigations reporter for The Washington Post. He joined the paper in 2017 and previously covered the White House. Before that, he covered the White House for Politico, and New York City Hall and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for the Wall Street Journal.

Josh Dawsey

Bryn Mawr College

Carol Leonnig is an investigative reporter, four-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and author of three best-selling books who has worked at The Washington Post since 2000. 

Carol D. Leonnig

Harvard University, BA IN Government

Jacqueline Alemany is a Congressional Investigations reporter for The Washington Post. Previously, she was the author of The Early 202, The Post's flagship early morning newsletter featuring news critical to the nation’s many power centers. Alemany is also an on-air contributor to NBC News and MSNBC.

Jacqueline Alemany

washpost

Mark Meadows’s lawyer son shot down Georgia 2020 election fraud claims

the-washington-post

President Donald J. Trump

Foreign Policy

Intelligence

Justice

Military

Balance of Power Pair

U.S. House Aggregate

U.S. Senate Aggregate

National Security

prism://prism.query/site,/national-security&limit=20

Sign up for Fact Checker, our weekly review of what's true, false or in-between in politics.

The Washington Post's coverage of national security issues, including the military, intelligence, justice, and foreign policy.

prism://prism.query/site-articles-only,/national&limit=20

National

The Washington Post's national news coverage. Get the latest national news, featuring national security, science and the courts. Read breaking national news headlines from across the U.S.

prism://prism.query/site-articles-only,/politics&limit=20

Cut through the 2024 election noise. Get The Campaign Moment newsletter.

Politics

Post Politics from The Washington Post is the source for political news headlines, in-depth politics coverage and political opinion, plus breaking news on the biden administration and White House, Congress, the Supreme Court, elections and more.