According to filings with the Federal Election Commission, lame duck Republican Congressman Madison Cawthorn reports that he’s personally more than half a million dollars in debt because of financial schemes he played with campaign money, The Daily Beast reports.
The filings show Cawthorn claims to have loaned his campaign more than $800,000 out of pocket in the 2020 and 2022 election cycles. Currently, his campaign account has just $1,504 in it as of June 30th; it owes hundreds of thousands to vendors, and it’s expected to repay or donate to a non-profit funds donors gave the campaign for the November general election, a point made moot by Cawthorn losing the Republican primary for re-election.
Cawthorn created his own financial mess, using funds donated for the general election to fund his primary battle against a less immature, more sane Republican. Using those funds violated FEC regulations on campaign spending. Records show Cawthorn was more than $200,000 overdrawn on his campaign accounts in the weeks after the May 31st primary. To try to cover up his misuse of campaign funds, Cawthorn reportedly took money out of his own pocket to pay back the deficit. That leaves Cawthorn more than $500,000 short, meaning he does not have campaign funds that can repay his loan.
Cawthorn still owes two creditors more than $300,000. One of those debts amounts to $184,000 to a company called EMP Strategies, owned by Cawthorn’s long-time friend and chief of staff Blake Harp. The alleged self-dealing within the Cawthorn campaign has raised complaints from campaign finance experts. (Harp is not the staffer who grabbed Cawthorn’s crotch in a video discovered prior to the primary.)
The tree-punching, crossdressing Republican became a dumpster fire for the GOP as he racked up scandal after scandal while shamelessly self-promoting his far-right views. Besides the ongoing financial improprieties, Cawthorn claimed to have been invited to cocaine-fueled orgies by Capitol Hill septuagenarians. He also had numerous charges of trying to bring loaded guns onto planes, and a video surfaced of him dry-humping a male aide in bed while performing orangutan vocalizations.
He also had very curious campaign spending habits, including hundreds of dollars at fast-food chain Chik-Fil-A and thousands of dollars at a North Carolina cigar shop Cawthorn frequented, including a $500 expenditure on the night of primary election he lost.
Cawthorn collected a $3 million settlement, which is likely tax-free on a federal level as most car accident injury settlements are, following a car accident that left him a paraplegic from the waist down.