U.S. soldiers alive, despite Russia 'fake news' report, U.S. military says

Three current and former members of the Tennessee National Guard falsely identified in a Russian media report as mercenaries who were killed in Ukraine are in fact alive and well, the Tennessee National Guard said on Thursday.

President Joe Biden ordered the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Ukraine prior to Russia's invasion of the country as part of a broader effort to avoid a direct confrontation with the nuclear-armed adversary.

But the report published in Russia's Pravda newspaper identified the Americans by name and gave military ranks for each of them, citing information from pro-Russian militia in Ukraine's Donetsk.

The report even offered an intricate explanation for how the three were identified, using items from a backpack "near the remains of one of the militants" -- including a Tennessee state flag.

"The Tennessee Guard is aware of the fake news coming out of Russia," said Tracy O'Grady, a spokesperson for the larger U.S. National Guard.

The Tennessee Guard said in a statement: "They are accounted for, safe and not, as the article headline erroneously states, U.S. mercenaries killed in Donetsk People's Republic."

A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said two of the men were still in the Tennessee National Guard and in Tennessee. The other man had left the service was but was alive and accounted for -- and not in Ukraine, the official said.

The National Guard speculated the militia picked the three men while reviewing official imagery associated with a 2018 deployment by Tennessee's 278th Armored Cavalry Regiment to Ukraine, suggesting all three had been in Ukraine.

"All members of the Tennessee National Guard returned safely to their home state in 2019 after a successful mission," it said.

Russia on Sunday attacked the main base where, prior to Biden's pullout, the U.S. military had long trained Ukrainian forces. It fired air-launched cruise missiles from Russian airspace at the Yavoriv International Centre for Peacekeeping and Security.

The base is located just 15 miles (25 km) from the Polish border.

North Carolina investigating Meadows' voter registration

North Carolina state investigators are probing the voter registration of Mark Meadows, a former chief of staff to President Donald Trump, amid questions about him listing a home he never owned on voter records, the state attorney general’s office said Thursday.

Attorney General Josh Stein's office asked the State Bureau of Investigation to look into Meadows' voter registration after a local prosecutor requested that state authorities oversee any probe of the matter, N.C. Department of Justice spokeswoman Nazneen Ahmed said in an email.

“We have asked the SBI to investigate and at the conclusion of the investigation, we’ll review their findings,” Ahmed said.

In a letter Monday, Macon County District Attorney Ashley Welch asked the attorney general's office to handle any probe into Meadows' voter registration and said that she would recuse herself from the matter. She noted that Meadows, a former congressman from the area, contributed to her campaign for DA and appeared in political ads endorsing her.

She also said she had no knowledge of the case until it was reported in the media.

“Until being contacted by the media, I was unaware of any allegations of voter fraud surrounding Mark Meadows,” she said

Welch's office released the letter Thursday and declined further comment.

A spokesman for Meadows didn’t immediately return an email seeking comment Thursday.

WRAL-TV first reported that state authorities are investigating Meadows' voter registration.

Public records show that Meadows is registered to vote in two states, including North Carolina, where he listed a mobile home he did not own as his legal residence weeks before casting a ballot in the 2020 presidential election.

Meadows listed a mobile home in Scaly Mountain, North Carolina, as his physical address on Sept. 19, 2020, while he was serving as Trump’s chief of staff in Washington, D.C. Scaly Mountain is just north of the Georgia-North Carolina border and about 90 miles (145 km) west of Asheville.

Meadows later cast an absentee ballot for the general election by mail. Trump won the battleground state by just over 1 percentage point.

The New Yorker, which first reported the questions about Meadows' voter registration, interviewed the current and former owner of the Scaly Mountain property. The previous owner said Meadows’ wife rented the property “for two months at some point within the past few years” but only spent one or two nights there. Neighbors said Meadows was never present, The New Yorker reported.

Public records indicate Meadows registered to vote in Alexandria, Virginia, almost exactly one year after he registered in Scaly Mountain and just weeks before Virginia’s high-profile governor’s election last fall.

Meadows frequently raised the prospect of voter fraud before the 2020 presidential election, as polls showed Trump trailing Joe Biden, and in the months following Trump’s loss to suggest Biden was not the legitimate winner. He repeated those baseless claims that the election was stolen in his 2021 memoir.