WASHINGTON — Nearly 34,000 people have signed a petition calling on Republican 11th District Congressman Madison Cawthorn to resign for his role in the run-up to the riot at the U.S. Capitol two weeks ago.
Cawthorn, 25, who was elected to the district in southwestern North Carolina in November, is the youngest member of Congress and is seen as a rising GOP star. But even some members of the Republican Party say he has gone too far.
Since Election Day, Cawthorn has been one of the foremost promoters of President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud.
"Get on the phone. Call your congressman," he said during a Dec. 21 speech to the conservative group Turning Point USA supporting Trump’s effort to overturn the election results. "You can lightly threaten them and say, 'If you don’t start supporting election integrity, I’m coming after you, Madison Cawthorn's coming after you, everybody’s coming after you.'"
Later in the same speech, he said. "We were born for such a time as this, and it’s time for us to rise up and fight."
By Rob Schofield 1/22/2021
Congressman’s claim that he trained for the Paralympic Games shown to be misleading at best
The list of disturbing reports about freshman North Carolina congressman, Madison Cawthorn — both with respect to his behavior since winning election last November and the truthfulness of the public statements he’s made over time about his background — continues to multiply.
For the latest, check out reporter Sara Luterman’s story from earlier today in The Nation entitled “The Ignominious Deceits of Congressman Cawthorn.” As Luterman reports in great detail, Cawthorn — whose repeated outrageous actions have already spurred tens of thousands of people to sign a petition demanding his resignation — has been caught in another whopper about his background. This is from the story:
Throughout his short but meteoric political career, Cawthorn has used his disability to tell a story of overcoming: Despite great adversity, he claims to have achieved excellence through grit and physical strength. Many of his campaign ads featured images of Cawthorn intubated and hospitalized alongside videos of him lifting weights and hurtling forward in a racing wheelchair. But his claims of sporting success—like his accounts of education and business acumen—have often been misleading.
Not only has Cawthorn mislead people into believing that he was a successful business owner headed for enrollment at the U.S. Naval Academy at the time of the car accident that caused him to become partially paralyzed (neither statement was true), he has also falsely indicated that he was training for the 2020 Paralympic Games before he ran for office.
A government watchdog group is asking the House Office of Congressional Ethics to investigate GOP Reps. Andy Biggs (Ariz.), Madison Cawthorn (N.C.) and Paul Gosar (Ariz.) over the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
The complaint from the liberal watchdog group Campaign for Accountability accuses the House Republicans of inciting the riot as part of “a seditious conspiracy to use force to prevent Congress from carrying out its constitutional and statutory duties to count the votes of the Electoral College.”
The group is also asking the House ethics office to recommend the congressmen be expelled from the House if it is found that they violated federal law.
The GOP lawmakers were vocal supporters of President Trump's baseless claims of widespread voter fraud, and all voted to uphold objections to Arizona and Pennsylvania’s electors after Congress resumed its count after the riot.
Melanie Flowers had a lot to do this week, and a protest was yet another item on her list. The student body president at N.C. State University was beginning classes, juggling her studies and student government commitments in an ongoing pandemic that makes everything harder.
“There’s … a lot going on,” she said Wednesday evening, before heading into a late student Senate meeting.
Still, she and her student government colleagues organized a protest on campus when the university announced it would take no action against an employee, Chadwick Seagraves, accused of harassing a student online, exposing Black Lives Matters protesters’ personal information on right-wing forums and having ties to the violent Proud Boys organization.
“I can’t believe it’s even necessary,” Flowers said of the protest. “I hope that at some point we’ll get to the point where students will look back on this protest and say, ‘Dang, they had to work for that? They had to protest for that?’”
For Flowers, the case against Seagraves is clear.
There are photos and video of Seagraves allegedly fraternizing with prominent white supremacist figures,
Thanks again, please stay safe out there!