by MPeriod
Posted 3 years ago
Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.), currently the youngest member of Congress - at the age of 25, has recently come under fire both for previous accusations of sexual assault and harassment (college RAs apparently pre-warned females in the dorm to never go on rides off campus with him due to his behavior) and now the close friend who was driving the car that left him in a wheelchair is speaking out about another falsehood on which Cawthorn built his upstart political career.
Cawthorn’s account of the 2014 wreck — which he presented publicly in the chapel of his Christian college in Virginia three years later — was that a close friend had crashed the car in which he was a passenger, leaving him to die “in a fiery tomb,”. That apparently was a lie, a news article from 2015 about the hospital that treated Cawthorn is quoted in saying: "After his friend rescued him from the burning car, Madison was flown to Halifax by helicopter in the “Golden Hour,” the time after an accident when the chances of surviving traumatic injuries are the best." This matches the account of the story Cawthorn's friend spoke out about this week.
The friend, Bradley Ledford, countered Cawthorns account saying: “It hurt very badly that he would say something as false as that. That is not at all what happened. I pulled him out of the car the second that I was able to get out of the car.”
That was just one element of a story rich with lies, the Post reported. Cawthorn claimed he was “declared dead” after the wreck. He wasn’t. The police report noted he was “incapacitated.” Cawthorn said he was preparing before the crash to start studies at the U.S. Naval Academy ― a boast that he eventually turned into a campaign ad. But the news outlet AVL Watchdog reported in August that Cawthorn had been rejected by the Naval Academy before the crash.
Cawthorn has used a wheelchair since the crash. He drives a specially equipped car that has been linked to sexual misconduct accusations. More than 150 former students at his college signed a letter late last year accusing him of “sexually predatory behavior,” which Cawthorn has denied.
BuzzFeed News talked with more than three dozen people who described allegations of sexual misconduct while Cawthorn was at Patrick Henry College. Four women told BuzzFeed that Cawthorn was aggressive, misogynistic or predatory toward them. Cawthorn called them derogatory names in public, asked inappropriate questions about their sex lives, kissed and touched them without their consent, they told reporters. Many of the aggressive encounters occurred during what Cawthorn liked to call “fun drives” in his car, according to BuzzFeed.
Topic: Politics
Tags: Madison Cawthorn Madison Cawthorn