Mark Meadows

Mark Randall Meadows (born July 28, 1959) is an American politician who served as the 29th White House chief of staff from 2020 to 2021 under the Trump administration.

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.

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.

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 [Meadows] 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.

He appeared in the controversial creationist film Raising the Allosaur: The True Story of a Rare Dinosaur and the Home Schoolers Who Found It (2002), which was debunked by experts.

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.

In 2011, he moved to Glenville, North Carolina.

Meadows voted against disaster relief spending for October 2012's Hurricane Sandy, which struck the Northeastern United States and caused severe damage.

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 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 United States House of Representatives.

In 2014, Meadows sold 134 acre of land in Dinosaur, Colorado, to a young earth creationist group.

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.

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.

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 Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, Meadows participated in Trump's failed 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.

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, and described his upbringing as "poor".

He has said he was a "fat nerd" who went on a diet after a classmate rejected him for a date.