Mark Meadows


Mark Randall Meadows is an American politician who served as the 29th White House chief of staff from 2020 to 2021 under the Trump administration. A member of the Republican Party, he also served as the U.S. representative for North Carolina's 11th congressional district from 2013 to 2020. During his legislative tenure, Meadows chaired the Freedom Caucus from 2017 to 2019. He was considered one of Donald Trump's closest allies in the House of Representatives before his appointment as chief of staff.
A Tea Party Republican, Meadows was a founding member of the Freedom Caucus. During his time in Congress, he was one of the most conservative Republican lawmakers and played an important part of the United States federal government shutdown of 2013. He also sought to remove John Boehner as Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Meadows resigned from Congress on March 31, 2020, to become White House chief of staff. As chief of staff, he played an influential role in the Trump administration's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. He pressured the Food and Drug Administration to adopt less strict guidelines for COVID-19 vaccine trials, and admonished the White House's own infectious disease experts for not "staying on message" with Trump's rhetoric. In October 2020, Meadows said it was futile to try "to control the pandemic", emphasizing instead a plan to contain it with vaccines and therapeutics. As the virus spread among White House staff in the fall of 2020, he reportedly sought to conceal the cases, including his own. After the 2020 presidential election, Meadows participated in Trump's effort to overturn the election results and remain in power.
On December 14, 2021, Meadows was held in criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate with the January 6 Select Committee. He is the first White House chief of staff since the Watergate scandal and first former member of Congress to have been held in contempt of Congress. The contempt charge was referred to the Justice Department, which declined to prosecute him.
On October 26, 2022, a South Carolina circuit judge ordered Meadows to testify before a Georgia grand jury investigating Republican efforts to reverse the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia. The grand jury was empaneled by Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis, who said the inquiry is examining "the multistate, coordinated efforts to influence the results of the November 2020 election in Georgia and elsewhere."
On August 14, 2023, he was indicted along with 18 other people in the prosecution related to the 2020 election in Georgia; Meadows is the second White House Chief of Staff to face criminal charges, after H. R. Haldeman.
On April 24, 2024, Meadows was indicted by an Arizona grand jury on felony charges along with several others related to their alleged efforts to subvert Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in the state, according to an announcement by the state attorney general. Others indicted on the same charges include Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, John Eastman, Christina Bobb, top campaign adviser Boris Epshteyn, and former campaign aide Mike Roman. "They are accused of allegedly aiding an unsuccessful strategy to award the state’s electoral votes to Trump instead of Biden after the 2020 election. Also charged are the Republicans who signed paperwork on Dec. 14, 2020, that falsely purported Trump was the rightful winner, including former state party chair Kelli Ward, state Sens. Jake Hoffman and Anthony Kern, and Tyler Bowyer, a GOP national committeeman and chief operating officer of Turning Point Action, the campaign arm of the pro-Trump conservative group Turning Point USA."
On November 9, 2025, Trump pardoned Meadows.

Early life and education

Meadows's mother was from Sevierville, Tennessee, and his father from Pine Bluff, Arkansas. He was born at a United States Army hospital in Verdun, France, where his father was serving in the Army and his mother worked as a civilian nurse.
Meadows grew up in Brandon, Florida. He has said he was a "fat nerd" who went on a diet after a classmate rejected him for a date. Meadows attended Florida State University for one year in 1977–78. It was reported that Meadows held a Bachelor of Arts from the University of South Florida for many years in his official biography maintained by the Office of the Historian of the U.S. House of Representatives. In actuality, he graduated from the University of South Florida with an Associate of Arts.

Early career

In 1987, Meadows started "Aunt D's", a small restaurant in Highlands, North Carolina, with building space provided by members of the Community Bible Church in Highlands. He later sold the sandwich shop, and used the proceeds to start a real estate development company in the Tampa, Florida, area where he resided until 2013, after he won the NC-11 Congressional district. After a stint working in a local hardware store, Meadows received support from Ginger Burnett Glasson: she provided a tract of land for a house; a joint business operating as Randall Burnett Investments, and work at a pizzeria she bought "to have something to do during the day and to help out."
While living in Highlands, Meadows served as chairman of the Republican Party in Macon County, and was a delegate to several state and national Republican conventions. Meadows was on North Carolina's Board for Economic Development in Western North Carolina.
In 2011, he moved to Glenville, North Carolina. In 2016, he sold his house and moved into an apartment in Biltmore Park, a mixed-use community in Asheville, North Carolina, while deciding where to buy next in either Henderson or Buncombe counties. He is the owner of Highlands Properties, which specializes in construction and land development. In 2014, Meadows sold of land in Dinosaur, Colorado, to a young earth creationist group. He appeared in the controversial creationist film Raising the Allosaur: The True Story of a Rare Dinosaur and the Home Schoolers Who Found It, which was debunked by experts.

U.S. House of Representatives

In Congress, Meadows had an ultraconservative voting record. He signed the Contract from America, a set of ten policies assembled by the Tea Party movement. Meadows was, with Jim Jordan, a founding member of the Freedom Caucus.
Meadows voted against disaster relief spending for October 2012's Hurricane Sandy, which struck the Northeastern United States and caused severe damage. He was one of several Republicans who claimed the funding bill contained pork-barrel spending that had nothing to do with hurricane relief, a claim the bill's supporters denied. Meadows's opposition to Sandy relief was recalled in 2017 news accounts after he and many Republicans who had opposed it voted in favor of disaster aid following Hurricane Harvey, which caused massive damage in Louisiana and Texas that August. Critics alleged that Republicans were hypocritically opposing spending in states with Democratic majorities while supporting it in Republican states. Republicans, including Meadows, claimed the situations were different because the Harvey spending bill contained no "pork". A Congressional Research Service review determined that the Sandy spending bill's funds were almost all devoted to recovery from Sandy.
Meadows served as chair of the Subcommittee on Government Operations up until June 20, 2015, when fellow Republican congressman Jason Chaffetz removed him from the position. A member of the House Republican leadership, Chaffetz removed Meadows due to Meadows's vote against a procedural motion the Republican leadership presented. Meadows was one of 34 Republicans who voted against the motion, which allowed for consideration of President Barack Obama's request for fast-track authority on trade agreements. Speaker John Boehner supported the measure, but many Republicans felt it gave too much power to Democrats and Obama specifically. Chaffetz's action was seen as controversial, with many prominent Republican politicians, including Texas senator Ted Cruz, speaking out against the punishment.
Meadows served as ranking member of the House Oversight Committee for 18 days, until he assumed the office of White House Chief of Staff.
Meadows was a member of these committees:
Meadows was a member of these caucuses:
Meadows has been described as playing an important part of the 2013 United States federal government shutdown. On August 21, 2013, he wrote an open letter to Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor encouraging them to "affirmatively de-fund the implementation and enforcement of Obamacare in any relevant appropriations bills brought to the House floor in the 113th Congress, including any continuing appropriations bill." The document was signed by 79 of Meadows's colleagues in the House. Heritage Action, ran critical Internet advertisements in the districts of 100 Republican lawmakers who failed to sign the letter. The letter has been described as controversial within the Republican Party.
The New York Daily News said Meadows put the federal government on the road to shutdown, saying calls to defund Obamacare through spending bills languished until Meadows wrote his letter. Meadows downplayed his influence, saying "I'm one of 435 members and a very small part of this." CNN described Meadows as the "architect of the brink" for his letter suggesting that Obamacare be defunded in any continuing appropriations bill. Meadows said that sensationalized his role.
John Ostendorff of the Asheville Citizen-Times wrote that Meadows "said it's best to close the government in the short term to win a delay on 'Obamacare', despite the potential negative impact on the economy." Ostendorff wrote that Meadows said he was doing what Tea Party members in Western North Carolina wanted him to do. Meadows said his constituents wanted him to fight against Obamacare "regardless of consequences." Jane Bilello, head of the Asheville Tea Party, said Meadows "truly represents us" on the issue of Obamacare. Meadows reportedly held conference calls with members of the Asheville Tea Party, telling them what was going on in Congress and about challenges he faced promoting their agenda.
In public comments, Meadows said he was working on a compromise that involved passing appropriations bills that would fund only parts of the government, such as a bill to fund the National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution, National Gallery of Art, and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and a bill to fund the National Institutes of Health. But partial or "mini" funding bills were rejected by the Democratic majority in the United States Senate.