Mark Meadows makes surprise appearance at Georgia ballot signature audit

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows made a surprise appearance at Georgia’s audit of absentee ballot envelope signatures Tuesday afternoon. The former Republican congressman from North Carolina was flanked by Secret Service agents as he arrived at the Cobb County Civic Center in Marietta, where state officials were in the process of conducting signature verification on absentee mail-in ballots. He was not allowed in the room where officials were inspecting ballot envelopes, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. Meadows had previously made headlines with a tweet Monday evening vowing to “fight back” against President-elect Joe Biden's victory. “Several members of Congress just finished a meeting in the Oval Office with President @realDonaldTrump, preparing to fight back against mounting evidence of voter fraud. Stay tuned,” Meadows wrote.

The visit to an official election site came on the heels of several late-breaking developments in the Trump team's bid to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election. Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Republican from Florida, signed on to the long-shot congressional challenge scheduled to take place Jan. 6. Gaetz joins a long list of Republican colleagues in the House, as well as Sen.-elect Tommy Tuberville, who promised to "get [the election outcome] corrected." This eleventh-hour effort from Republicans is unlikely to prove successful. Vote totals indicate that Biden won 306 electoral votes to President Trump's 232, and the popular vote tally shows the former vice president leading by about 7 million votes. Congressional leadership in both chambers has signaled a reluctance to intervene in the process. Democrats, who retained a narrow majority in the House, are unlikely to support the bid by virtue of their partisanship. In the Republican-controlled Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell dissuaded his colleagues from joining Trump's efforts. Meadows's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/mark-meadows-georgia-signature-audit

https://twitter.com/MarkMeadows/status/1341157317451124745

https://twitter.com/RepMoBrooks/status/1339623798866407425