Mark Meadows Nonprofit Funneled Cash for Legal Bills, Group Says

A liberal group alleges former White House Chief-of-Staff Mark Meadows’ nonprofit employer funneled money to an organization paying his legal bills while he was being investigated for efforts to overturn the 2020 election, according to a complaint filed with the Washington DC Attorney General Wednesday.

The group, Accountable.US, claims the Conservative Partnership Institute improperly enriched Meadows in violation of its nonprofit status by giving a $1.2 million grant to another nonprofit, which in turn gave a similar amount to a third entity that provided legal defense funding to Meadows, according to the filing.

The group is asking the District of Columbia’s Attorney General, who has the power to dissolve nonprofit groups that aren’t operating in the public interest, to break up the Conservative Partnership Institute and the nonprofit it gave the funds to, Personnel Policy Operations.

The Washington DC, Attorney General, Meadows and the Conservative Partnership Institute didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Conservative Partnership Institute is a central player in a sprawling network of conservative groups preparing for a second Donald Trump administration. Meadows, who was previously Trump’s chief of staff and a longtime adviser to the former president, is a leader of the group. CPI paid him $846,887 in 2022, a high salary for heads of nonprofits and about $200,000 more than any other employee, according to public tax filings.

“There is significant public evidence showing that both organizations may be acting in a manner that is contrary to their nonprofit purposes, which is grounds for their immediate dissolution under DC law,” Caroline Ciccone, president of Accountable.US, wrote in the complaint.

According to the complaint, which is based on public tax filings, CPI gave a $1.2 million grant to the newly-founded group Personnel Policy Operations. The two share an address in Washington. PPO then gave $1.1 million to the Constitutional Rights Defense Fund, which provided legal defense funding to Trump allies including Meadows and former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, according to the group’s website.

In order to maintain their tax-exempt status, nonprofit groups are supposed to operate for the benefit of the public rather than groups of partisan operatives, the complaint said. Accountable.US is asking the attorney general to examine how CPI funneled money to another group that then paid Meadows’ bills.

“PPO appears to be operating exclusively for the private benefit of a small number of Republican party operatives,” Ciccone wrote in the complaint. “If, as its website indicates, PPO was operated solely to provide legal defense costs to a small group of Republican operatives connected to Donald Trump, then it is operating exclusively for the private interest of those individuals and is not serving any public purpose.”

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis charged Trump and Meadows among others with a conspiracy to corrupt Georgia’s 2020 election results last year. Meadows’ lawyers have said he didn’t engage in criminal activity.

Another liberal group, Campaign for Accountability, in February filed a similar complaint to the Internal Revenue Service, calling for the agency to look into the Conservative Partnership Institute over allegations it has engaged in political campaigning, a violation of its nonprofit status.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Emily Birnbaum in Washington at ebirnbaum3@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Sara Forden at sforden@bloomberg.net

Elizabeth Wasserman

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