Madison Cawthorn can’t help but keep tripping over his own feet.  First there’s the coke-fueled DC orgies, then it was multiple traffic violations for failing to have a valid license, then bringing guns onto planes, and now insider trading.

From the very conservative Washington Examiner:  Cawthorn has been implicated in a pump-and-dump stock manipulation scheme involving the now-worthless Let’s Go Brandon cryptocurrency that became a fad earlier this year when some people in a crowd at a NASCAR race shouted a epithet targeting Joe Biden, but it was misheard by a sports commentator.

It seems Cawthorn knew that the owners of the cryptocurrency were going to purchase advertising on a NASCAR race car.  He’s pictured on various posts to social media with James Koutoulas, a hedge fund manager who created the LGB crytocurrency.  In March, just days before Koutoulas bought sponsorship of the racecar, costing in the low eight-figures, Cawthorn reportedly bought shares of the LGB crytocurrency and pumped up the commodity to rally crowds.

“This is going to the moon, baby! To the moon!” Cawthorn said while pointing to an LGBCoin logo pinned to Koutoulas’s suit jacket in a post for LGBCoin on Twitter. “Letsgobrandon.com — get on the train. Get on the train. Take the power of currency away from the government.”

That post was made days before another marketing deal with the cryptocurrency which shot the price up more than 300%, going from essentially worthless to a little less worthless, but still making money for people who had large amounts of the commodity.

Koutoulas has been careful to note that he structured the LGBCoin to circumvent federal regulations, but Cawthorn’s vigorous endorsement of the product violates established Congressional protocols and ethics rules against Congressional officials officially endorsing commercial products or financial instruments given Congress’s role in regulating those markets.

The fact that LGBCoin isn’t a registered commodity won’t save Cawthorn:  stock manipulation is a crime regardless of if the stock is publicly traded or not; private enterprises can be charged with stock manipulation if they are financial alter the value of stocks they intend to sell or gift to another person to enrich themselves or to avoid tax burdens.  And Cawthorn would be required to disclose any financial stake he had in the product in his Congressional financial disclosure forms.

“Owning cryptocurrency would be an asset subject to disclosure of a lawmaker’s annual financial disclosure form,” Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen, said. “It also could constitute a ‘personal benefit’ under the STOCK Act, making any official actions taken by Cawthorn to specifically and substantially benefit its value a violation of the STOCK Act.”

The LGBCoin is valued on Tuesday at $0.000000001104.