Donald Trump’s last White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, has been removed from the electoral roll in North Carolina, amid a criminal inquiry into whether he committed election fraud by registering to vote at a residence he never owned or lived in.

Melanie Thibault, director of the Macon county board of elections, confirmed her decision to the Asheville Citizen Times, which reported that the registration for Meadows’s wife, Debra, remained active.

Before working for Trump, Meadows was a congressman from North Carolina.

According to the New Yorker, which reported the story last month, Meadows registered as his address a rented mobile home, in Scaly Mountain, which he reportedly had never visited.

He voted from there as an absentee in the 2020 presidential election. He has subsequently registered to vote in Virginia.

According to neighbors in Scaly Mountain and the former owner of the property, Debra Meadows rented and stayed at the mobile home for “a few nights” but her husband was never seen there.

Thibault said Meadows’s removal from the electoral roll was standard procedure under a statute that says a person who votes in another state loses their registration in North Carolina.

Meadows, who with his wife owns a condo in Virginia, reportedly voted in that state in 2021, triggering the decision to remove him from the rolls.

The Citizen reported that the North Carolina state bureau of investigation was continuing its inquiry into possible voter fraud by Meadows, a fierce Trump loyalist who has never commented on the story.

The bureau, the newspaper said, would not comment on whether Meadows’s removal from the North Carolina roll would affect its investigation.

Meadows has commented, extensively, on the dangers of voter fraud and its supposed role in Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election.

He addressed the subject at length in his memoir, The Chief’s Chief, a book which caused huge controversy when it revealed that Trump tested positive then negative for Covid before his first debate against Joe Biden, results which Meadows did not disclose.

“President Trump had alerted us to the strong possibility that there would be fraud connected to these mail-in ballots, and we wanted to be on the lookout for it,” Meadows wrote in the book, adding: “We wanted to approach any potential challenges with the utmost seriousness.”

The Trump campaign lost the overwhelming majority of cases alleging voter fraud in court. Trump’s lie about mass voter fraud in Biden’s win also fueled the deadly attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, in an attempt to stop certification of electoral college results.

In his book, Meadows called the Capitol attack “shameful” and “the regrettable actions of a small group of people”.

About 800 people, however, have been charged, with offences including seditious conspiracy.

Meadows also claimed “millions” of Americans had “genuine concerns” about voter fraud.

Meadows’s own legal jeopardy is not confined to North Carolina. The House committee investigating the attack has referred him to the Department of Justice for a possible charge of criminal contempt of Congress.