He pressured the Food and Drug Administration to adopt less strict guidelines for COVID-19 vaccine trials,[2] and admonished the White House's own infectious disease experts for not "staying on message" with Trump's rhetoric.

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.

"[13] 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.

[17] 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.

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.

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 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.

[27][19] Meadows voted against disaster relief spending for October 2012's Hurricane Sandy, which struck the Northeastern United States and caused severe damage.

[28][29] 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.

[31] 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.

[38][42] Heritage Action (which opened operations in North Carolina in January 2011[43]), ran critical Internet advertisements in the districts of 100 Republican lawmakers who failed to sign the letter.

[39] 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.

[38] 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.

[53] In late 2011 Meadows announced he was running for Congress in North Carolina's 11th congressional district, for the seat being vacated by Democratic incumbent Heath Shuler.

[56] Meadows won the July 2012 Republican primary runoff,[57] and in the November general election faced Democratic nominee Hayden Rogers, who had been Shuler's chief of staff.

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.

In a taped phone call during which Meadows was present, Trump attempted to pressure Raffensperger into recounting Georgia's votes, claiming he had won the state.

[82][83][84] In early December 2021, 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.

[89] Former Meadows top aide Cassidy Hutchinson provided extensive closed-door testimony to the January 6 committee, which signaled it considered her a key witness.

[91] In late November 2022, the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled that Meadows must testify in the Georgia election probe into the Trump–Raffensperger phone call.

[94] In June 2023, it was reported that Meadows had testified to a federal grand jury as part of special counsel Jack Smith's ongoing investigation into the former president's handling of classified documents.

He pressured the Food and Drug Administration to adopt less strict guidelines for COVID-19 vaccine trials[2] and admonished the White House's own infectious disease experts for not "staying on message" with Trump's rhetoric.

[107] In October 2020, when asked about the lack of face mask usage at Trump rallies, Meadows said it was futile to try "to control the pandemic" and that the focus would be on getting a vaccine.

[108] Public health experts, including those in the White House, have pointed to face masks as one of the most basic precautions that have been proven to halt the spread of COVID-19.

He also 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.

In March 2013, he said that if the Supreme Court ruled gay marriage bans unconstitutional, it would be a "huge invasion into states' rights" and cause a constitutional crisis.

[101] Less than a year after entering Congress, Meadows wrote the letter that initially urged House Speaker John Boehner to shut down the government unless the ACA was defunded.

"[129] Meadows, a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has been a harsh critic of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

[133] In July 2018, along with Jim Jordan, 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".

[134] Furthermore, during a Fox News interview by Laura Ingraham that same month, he "threatened to force a vote on the GOP resolution" that would impeach the deputy AG.