PAC run by Mark Meadows’ wife fined, closing after campaign finance violation
A political action committee run by the wife of Mark Meadows, former President Donald Trump’s last chief of staff, plans to close and faces a nearly $10,000 fine over accusations of violating federal election law.
The fine and closure will resolve a dispute with the Federal Election Commission through an agreement between Right Women PAC’s attorney, Thomas Datwyler, and officials in the FEC’s Alternative Dispute Resolution Office, a program that attempts to settle administrative complaints and referrals outside standard enforcement procedures.
Brett Kappel, an attorney with Harmon Curran focused on campaign finance, lobbying and government ethics law cases, said it is not unusual to see a super PAC terminate itself after paying a significant FEC penalty.
“In fact, the Commission sometimes makes termination a condition of settling the case for a lower penalty than the FEC would normally seek,” Kappel said.
Right Women PAC found itself the recipient of 11 requests for additional information from the FEC in 2022 because it either failed to file reports on time or filed amended reports that failed to offer clear explanations of changes from original reporting.
Neither Datwyler nor Debra Meadows, whose husband formerly served as a North Carolina congressman, responded to emails Wednesday or a text message Thursday requesting comment for this article.
Failure to file
The PAC is facing a $9,500 fine over a particular 48-hour report it failed to file in 2022 that would have alerted the public that the PAC had spent more than $191,871 on an ad supporting former Rep. Stella Yvette Herrell, a Republican from New Mexico, in her reelection bid against Rep. Gabe Vasquez, a Democrat.
Vasquez won the election by just 1,300 votes, on Nov. 8, 2022, after New Mexico lawmakers redrew Herrell’s district to favor a Democratic win.
Election law requires a committee spending more than $10,000, 20 days or more before an election, to file a 48-hour expense report. That threshold drops closer to the election.
But Right Women PAC did not file a 48-hour report to the FEC for its Sept. 7, 2022, expenditure until after the November election.
In FEC documents, representatives of the PAC said the failure to file the report was because of administrative error and that they filed the report as soon as FEC notified them of the mistake.
The PAC agreed to pay $9,500 by Monday, though it’s not yet clear whether the payment has been made.
Because the committee chose to shut down by July 27, it also agreed to certify the closure of its federal accounts. The committee must continue filing required reports until the FEC approves its closure. In its last report, filed in April, the PAC had $148,945 cash on hand.
Helping women candidates
Right Women PAC was founded by Debra Meadows for the 2020 election, to help fund the primary- and winnable general-election campaigns of conservative, pro-Trump candidates running for the U.S. House. That included candidates like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, who both went on to serve in Congress.
Debra Meadows served as the executive director. Sen. Ted Budd’s wife, Amy Kate Budd, served on the advisory board.
Right Women PAC has shut down its website and most of its social media accounts, though on X, formerly Twitter, the group’s banner still shows Debra Meadows sitting in a car with Trump.
Legal fees
Right Women PAC previously garnered attention after it switched from paying Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer at the center of Trump’s attempts to retain his presidency, to paying Buckley, a high-profile law firm that handles white-collar crime and congressional investigations.
It was never clear why the PAC began making these payments, but they were timed a month after the House January 6 Select Committee subpoenaed Mark Meadows for documents and his testimony about the events leading to and surrounding the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The PAC stopped paying Buckley after July 2023, and began paying the Compass Legal Group, whose chief counsel served on Trump’s White House counsel team.
Neither Buckley nor Compass have been linked to Mark Meadows after he was indicted twice on allegations that he helped in attempts to overturn the 2020 elections.
Both Mark and Debra Meadows also faced an investigation in North Carolina for voter fraud, but neither were charged.
