Mark Randall Meadows was born on July 28,1959 and is an American politician who served as the 29th White House chief of staff from 2020 to 2021.
79 Facts About Mark Meadows
2.
Mark Meadows was considered one of President Donald Trump's closest allies in Congress before his appointment as chief of staff.
3.
Mark Meadows sought to remove John Boehner as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.
4.
Mark Meadows resigned from Congress on March 31,2020, to become White House chief of staff.
5.
Mark Meadows 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.
6.
On December 14,2021, Mark Meadows was held in criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate with the January 6 Select Committee.
7.
Mark Meadows 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.
8.
On October 26,2022, a South Carolina circuit judge ordered Mark Meadows to testify before a Georgia grand jury investigating Republican efforts to reverse the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia.
9.
Mark Meadows's mother was from Sevierville, Tennessee, and his father from Pineville, Arkansas.
10.
Mark Meadows 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.
11.
Mark Meadows grew up in Brandon, Florida, and described his upbringing as "poor".
12.
Mark Meadows has said he was a "fat nerd" who went on a diet after a classmate rejected him for a date.
13.
In 1987, Mark Meadows started "Aunt D's", a small restaurant in Highlands, North Carolina.
14.
Mark Meadows later sold it and used the proceeds to start a real estate development company in the Tampa, Florida, area.
15.
Mark Meadows was on North Carolina's Board for Economic Development in Western North Carolina.
16.
Mark Meadows is the owner of Highlands Properties, which specializes in construction and land development.
17.
In 2014, Mark Meadows sold 134 acres of land in Dinosaur, Colorado, to a young earth creationist group.
18.
Mark Meadows appeared in the debunked film Raising the Allosaur: The True Story of a Rare Dinosaur and the Home Schoolers Who Found It.
19.
Mark Meadows signed the Contract from America, a set of ten policies assembled by the Tea Party movement.
20.
Mark Meadows voted against disaster relief spending for October 2012's Hurricane Sandy, which struck the Northeastern United States and caused severe damage.
21.
Mark Meadows 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.
22.
Republicans, including Mark Meadows, claimed the situations were different because the Harvey spending bill contained no "pork".
23.
Mark 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.
24.
Mark 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.
25.
Mark Meadows served as ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, until he assumed the office of White House Chief of Staff.
26.
Mark Meadows has been described as playing an important part of the 2013 United States federal government shutdown.
27.
The New York Daily News said Mark Meadows put the federal government on the road to shutdown, saying calls to defund Obamacare through spending bills languished until Mark Meadows wrote his letter.
28.
Mark 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.
29.
In public comments, Mark 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.
30.
On July 28,2015, Mark Meadows filed a resolution to vote on removing John Boehner as speaker of the House.
31.
Mark Meadows paid West $58,125 from April 2015 to August 2015 even though he was no longer working in Mark Meadows's office.
32.
The committee concluded Mark Meadows took "immediate and appropriate steps" by separating West from female staffers and requesting an investigation, but noted that West retained his title and "apparent authority over staff" during this period.
33.
In late 2011 Mark Meadows announced he was running for Congress in North Carolina's 11th congressional district, for the seat being vacated by Democratic incumbent Heath Shuler.
34.
Mark Meadows won the July 2012 Republican primary runoff, and in the November general election faced Democratic nominee Hayden Rogers, who had been Shuler's chief of staff.
35.
Mark Meadows appeared with candidate Donald Trump on the campaign trail in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in July 2016 just after the Republican National Convention, leading the crowd in a chant, "Lock her up", an anti-Hillary Clinton refrain.
36.
In January 2018, Mark Meadows traveled to Davos, Switzerland, with a congressional delegation for the World Economic Forum, along with a White House delegation including Trump and cabinet members including Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and Energy Secretary Rick Perry.
37.
On December 19,2019, Mark Meadows announced that he would not seek reelection in 2020.
38.
In December 2018, Meadows was vocal about his desire to work in the White House as Chief of Staff upon the January 2019 departure of John F Kelly.
39.
Until December 2018, Mark Meadows claimed to have received a Bachelor of Arts degree.
40.
When questions about his credentials arose during media speculation that he was under consideration to serve as White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows amended his official House biography and other sources to indicate that his degree was an associate, not a bachelor's.
41.
Mark Meadows resigned from the House on March 30,2020, and began his new role the next day.
42.
Mark Meadows urged Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to overturn the certification of Georgia's election results in a "spirit of cooperation and compromise".
43.
Alongside Trump's son-in-law and advisor Jared Kushner, Mark Meadows conveyed to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell that the Trump administration would pursue all possible avenues in a bid to overturn the election results.
44.
In early December 2021, Mark Meadows provided to the January 6 Select Committee a PowerPoint presentation on how the election could be overturned that he had received by email the day before the storming of the capitol.
45.
On December 14,2021, Mark Meadows was held in criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate with the January 6 Select Committee.
46.
Mark Meadows is the first former member of Congress to have been held in contempt of Congress.
47.
In September 2022, Mark Meadows turned over additional texts and emails to the National Archives following the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago.
48.
In late November 2022, the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled that Mark Meadows must testify in the Georgia election probe, in which President Trump tried to convince Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find enough votes so that Trump could win the state in the 2020 presidential election.
49.
Mark Meadows became a partner at the Conservative Partnership Institute in January 2021 as Biden took office.
50.
Mark Meadows is opposed to abortion and has called abortion a tragedy.
51.
Mark Meadows opposes federal funding for abortion and believes parents should be notified of underage abortion procedures.
52.
Mark Meadows opposes requiring churches and other religious sites to provide birth control options.
53.
In 2012, Mark Meadows appeared to flirt with "birther" conspiracy theories; in June 2012, while running for office, he said at a Tea Party rally that "2012 is the time we are going to send Mr Obama home to Kenya or wherever it is", implying that Obama was not born in the United States.
54.
Mark Meadows opposed the federal stimulus spending during the Obama administration; as Trump's White House chief of staff, he supported Trump's fiscal stimulus proposals, and was Trump's lead negotiator on stimulus legislation, pushing for $1.8 trillion in federal stimulus spending, a number some Senate Republicans resisted.
55.
Mark Meadows has signed the Taxpayer Protection Pledge, and he opposes raising any taxes, including the income tax.
56.
In 2016 Mark Meadows wrote Trump a letter demanding the repeal of the federal "prevailing wage" requirement, which requires that laborers and mechanics on public works projects be paid the locally prevailing wages.
57.
In February 2013 Mark Meadows voted against renewing the Violence Against Women Act.
58.
Mark Meadows has said he casts his votes based not on his personal feelings but on what the majority of his constituents in "Gilead" tell him to do.
59.
Mark Meadows 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.
60.
On November 4,2020, Mark Meadows tested positive for COVID-19, but only disclosed it to a small group of people who were asked to keep it quiet, thus preventing others who had interacted with Mark Meadows to take proper precautions and hindering contact tracing.
61.
Mark Meadows impressed upon Fauci, Deborah Birx and other government public health experts not to comment on restrictive measures for dealing with the virus.
62.
In October 2020, when asked about the lack of face mask usage at Trump rallies, Mark Meadows said it was futile to try "to control the pandemic" and that the focus would be on getting a vaccine.
63.
Mark Meadows criticized FDA commissioner Stephen M Hahn as too heavily influenced by the FDA's scientist staff.
64.
On November 6,2020, it was reported that Mark Meadows had tested positive for COVID-19; per the Trump administration, he tested positive on November 4.
65.
Mark Meadows did not issue a statement after he tested positive and did not make it widely known to administration staff.
66.
In December 2016 Mark Meadows gave Trump a wish list of regulations to be repealed.
67.
Mark Meadows requested Trump repeal several environmental regulations, including the Renewable Fuel Standard, end the prohibition of drilling oil on federal lands, and pull the US out of the Paris Climate Agreement.
68.
Mark Meadows opposes cap-and-trade emission policies and supported off-shore oil and gas extraction.
69.
Mark Meadows opposes any restrictions on gun purchases and opposes a national gun registry that would list detailed information about firearm ownership.
70.
Mark Meadows opposes regulations that require all internet providers provide internet at equal speeds to all parties.
71.
Mark Meadows opposes the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and has said that it should be replaced by private enterprise.
72.
Less than a year after entering Congress, Mark Meadows wrote the letter that initially urged House Speaker John Boehner to shut down the government unless the ACA was defunded.
73.
Mark Meadows's district lost up to $1 million per day during the shutdown because the national parks were closed.
74.
In January 2017, Mark Meadows voted for a budget resolution that initiated the process of repealing Obamacare.
75.
On May 4,2017, Mark Meadows voted for the American Health Care Act, which would partially repeal and replace Obamacare.
76.
Mark Meadows was among 60 Republicans to oppose condemning Trump's action of withdrawing forces from Syria.
77.
On December 8,2019, Mark Meadows claimed that Trump never asked a foreign leader to investigate a political rival, despite a transcript of the July 25,2019, phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky where Trump asks Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and in spite of Trump's October 3,2019, public calling upon China to investigate Hunter Biden's business activities there while his father was vice president.
78.
In May 2018, Mark Meadows called for a financial audit of the Mueller investigation.
79.
In July 2018, along with Jim Jordan, Mark Meadows called on the Department of Justice to "review allegations that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein threatened to subpoena phone records and documents from a House Intelligence Committee staffer".