MADISON Cawthorn has recently found himself at the center of a growing series of scandals that threaten to overshadow his meteoric rise in the Republican Party. His campaign has more debt than cash on hand. A former close friend of right-wing Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) told The Washington Post the lawmaker lied about a car wreck that partially paralyzed him. ", "While the radical left wants to dismantle, defund, and destroy, Republicans, under President Trumps leadership, want to rebuild, restore and renew. Life is precious and it can be taken away at any time.. He repeatedly gave an inaccurate account of the 2014 accident that was contradicted by official medical documents . The newspaper also reported that Cawthorn had been charged with driving with a revoked license in 2017, before he was elected to Congress, but the charge was ultimately dismissed. He was riding as a passenger in a BMW X3 SUV near Daytona Beach, Florida, when his friend Bradley Ledford fell asleep at the wheel. In 2014, Cawthorn, who was only 18 then, was a passenger on the way back up to his home in North Carolina at the tailend of a spring break trip. Sean Neumann is a journalist from Chicago, Ill. On election night last November, Madison Cawthorn gathered with family and friends in anticipation of a victory that would make him one of the youngest congressmen in history and a rapidly rising star in the Republican Party. Here The Sun looks at Cawthorn's life in the public eye, from announcing his engagement to standing at the Republican National Convention and sharing news of his wedding online. "I remember his leg was pretty badly cut from the accident and we were sitting on the side of the interstate," Ledford recalled. Cawthorn left Patrick Henry after reportedly completing one semester. Madison Cawthorn Is Trying to Commit Every Possible Scandal - Intelligencer Luxury Homes for Sale in Grenoble, Auvergne Rhne Alpes, France He has a May court date on the. Needing to get at least 30 percent of the vote to avoid a runoff in July, Cawthorn is running out of money, running no ads on local TV and barely campaigning and all but trying to hide when he does. I cant climb anything. An accident report from the Florida Highway Patrol states that Cawthorn, who had planned to go off to college that fall, suffered "incapacitating" and "life threatening" injuries. Map. May 5, 2022 2 Mins Read. The vehicle crashed into a concrete barrier while Cawthorn's feet were on the dashboard. He has become one of the most vocal peddlers of the claim that the presidential election was fraudulently stolen from Donald Trump, another lie. As it turns out, neither claim is true. "He was much stronger than me," the woman in that incident said last year, remembering how he grabbed her face to kiss her after she had turned away. And Cawthorn traveled, sometimes with his parents, sometimes with his cousin, sometimes with the woman he would marry, to Boston, to Cuba, to the Swiss Alps. I read somewhere, said one of the attorneys toward the end of the day-long deposition, that you wanted to be a congressman?, Cawthorn speaks with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and supporters after a "Get Out the Vote" rally with North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis in October 2020. An accident report from the Florida Highway Patrol states that Cawthorn, who had planned to go off to college that fall, suffered "incapacitating" and "life threatening" injuries. He called the Ukrainian president a thug, he suggested Nancy Pelosi was an alcoholic (she doesnt drink), and the seemingly ceaseless gush of unsavory news has included allegations of insider trading, pictures of shuttered district offices, a leaked tranche of salacious images and videos, and ongoing proof in FEC filings that hes a prodigious fundraiser but a profligate spender as well. job reposted before interview; yuma county jail mugshots. We were just focused on caring about the people I want to represent., He talked to the New York Times. Cawthorns communications director, Micah Bock, referred BuzzFeed News to remarks he made at a campaign debate in which Cawthorn said: I have never done anything sexually inappropriate in my life.. IN 2020, Madison Cawthorn became one of the youngest people ever elected to serve in the US Congress at the age of just 25. If somebody attacked me at the time, if somebody attacked my family, literally they would be in more danger if I was there than if I wasnt. He described that as the most emasculating thing., Whats my purpose? he wondered. Four women told BuzzFeed that Cawthorn was aggressive, misogynistic or predatory toward them. In 2014, Cawthorn, who at the time was 18, was injured while returning from a spring-break trip from Florida. He has court dates in Polk and Cleveland counties in June for speeding and driving with a revoked license. By entering your email and clicking Sign Up, you're agreeing to let us send you customized marketing messages about us and our advertising partners. Ledford indicated to the Post that Cawthorn might have been saying "crazy things" because of the legal fight. A former . This is what led to Cawthorn's paralysis: He and Ledford had been returning to North Carolina from a spring break trip in Florida in April 2014 when, as Ledford later told police, Ledford started "dozing off" and then veered from the interstate, crashing his father's SUV into a concrete barricade going about 65 miles per hour. Cawthorn became partially paralyzed at age 18 after the SUV he was a passenger in crashed into a concrete barrier Credit: AP Cawthorn notably travels everywhere via a wheelchair due to a 2014 car crash that left him partially paralyzed from the waist down. According to a Washington Post report from this weekend, while giving a speech at Patrick Henry College in 2017, Cawthorn lied multiple times about the 2014 car crash that left him reliant on a. Bottom right: Cawthorn holds up a copy of legislation during a news conference outside the Capitol on April 21, 2021. Cawthorn, 25, was joined by Brad Ledford, whom he'd known since childhood and whom he introduced to other attendees in effusive terms. In fact he has claimed that the wheelchair itself became a source of inspiration to him. Electorally, come Tuesday, he could still win. But Ledford still doesn't understand why Cawthorn hasn't publicly clarified what happened. He was one of the contestants, but he emerged as the winning star, said Melissa Burns, a woman from Tennessee who was on the cruise and at the show. | I voted for Madison originally, I donated to him originally, I like him but hes self-destructing, OConnell told me. According to Cawthorn's latest filing, which covers his campaign from Jan 1 through April 27, the campaign was already operating at a deficit, with $324,566 in debts owed compared to $137,598 of cash on hand. More than 70 interviews with people who know Cawthorn, who have worked for him and against him, allies and enemies, activists and operatives and longtime watchers of politics here in the mountains of western North Carolina, paint a picture of a man in crisis. As for Cawthorns version of the car crash, that statement he made was false, Ledford told the Post. So, Ledford says, he reached over Cawthorn and punched out the passenger window. ", As Cawthorn told PEOPLE last year, not long after his election win: "I think it's just a lot more fun to be a conservative my generation is really probably the most pro-freedom generation since the founding fathers.". Bayardelle said that the couple met through a mutual friend and hit it off, and after four months knew he was the one.. The young congressman, 26, was forced on Wednesday to address a "blatantly" leaked nude video released by an opposition group campaigning against him. He made outlandish and unsubstantiated comments on an obscure podcast about orgies and cocaine use by his Capitol Hill colleagues. August 12, 2020 The Asheville, North Carolina, news outlet AVL Watchdog reports that Cawthorn said in a 2017 deposition he was rejected from the Naval Academy before a 2014 car crash left him . Here he was, though, three weeks past the date he turned 20, the handsome, charmed second son of an upper middle class financial adviser father and a homemaker mother who doubled as her boys teacher, a onetime football linebacker, avid weightlifter and duck-hunter, cheerful Chick-fil-A cashier. Like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/TheSunUS and follow us from our main Twitter account at @TheSunUS, 2020 THE SUN, US, INC. 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"While I was pulling him out of the window, a bystander came by and helped me carry him away from the car," Ledford says. ), He has an extreme version of what I always call successful person syndrome, said a Republican strategist familiar with Cawthorn and the campaign, defining it essentially as a first taste of success going to somebodys head. Cawthorn was 18 when he was critically injured in 2014 in Daytona Beach, Florida, after a car he was riding in struck a concrete pylon. Its a referendum on Cawthorn. That is not at all what happened.". He tried to open the driver-side door to escape, but it was jammed. Three days after he sent the texts to Ledford, some 40 miles south of the site of the accident that broke his ankles, his pelvis and his back, Cawthorn sat in an office in Orlando for a deposition for his (first) auto negligence lawsuit filed against his friend and his friends fathers company. Madison Cawthorn Lied About Crash That Partially Paralyzed - HuffPost Amanda Greene for Politico Magazine, Throughout 2018 and 2019, he continued to give motivational speeches at colleges and churches. Cawthorn is a member of Congress because he got 18,481 votes in a primary, which was 1,016 votes more than the candidate who finished third, which was enough to get to a runoff, which he won. He had a fundraiser at a restaurant in Hendersonville on Wednesday. The Asheville. And then when youre a young man who has a terrible accident like that, and your identity is kind of stripped from you, all of that is amplified even more, said a GOP consultant who knows Cawthorn. POLITICO Weekend delivers gripping reads, smart analysis and a bit of high-minded fun every Friday. He said it would be boring., Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images. Exclusive: Madison Cawthorn photos reveal him wearing women - POLITICO Cawthorn first attracted attention during his campaign for falsifying key elements of his biography. Erwin was in line to be Cawthorns district director until Cawthorn in the aftermath of his victory called Erwin a coward and a little bitch., Ive seen this through the years, but not to this degree, because people I think just dont have the trauma that he has., George Erwin, retired Henderson County sheriff, The disagreement began, Erwin said, when he wanted an older, more experienced woman to be hired for a position in the district office, and Cawthorn wanted a much younger woman instead. Brad Ledford was about to head off to college. Chief among them was Erwin, the sheriff who had helped Cawthorn from the start. Cawthorn is running for reelection in North Carolina's 11th District, which includes his hometown of Hendersonville. Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP, Graeme Sloan/Sipa USA/AP, and Ting Shen/Getty Images, Interviewers keyed in on the comeback story he had leaned on throughout his bid. The couple got hitched in April, sharing pictures of the day online. Tom Williams / CQ Roll Call via AP Images, Republican Rep. Madison Cawthorn warns of 'bloodshed' if election fraud occurs, The Citizen Times in Asheville, N.C., reported. In the course of the deposition, Cawthorn recounted for attorneys the hazy mental snapshots of what little he could recall from the days and weeks after the accident. Madison Cawthorn is in a wheelchair because of a car accident. Its never going to be just totally fine, said a friend. But the 26-year-old is not listed in the International Paralympic. The injuries from the accident left Cawthorn partially paralyzed from the waist down, and he now uses a wheelchair. Wake up determined to throat punch life, he said in one post. He liked cruises, too, and in 2019 he boarded one on which he played a big part in a risqu late-night game show called Quest. Trumps Washington hotel. Cawthorn is pictured wearing lingerie during a game on a cruise, in photos provided to POLITICO. There were 300 to 400 people in a theater on the ship, he said, and they were divided into about 10 teams.