House Ethics Committee admonishes Rep. Madison Cawthorn over crypto promotion, failure to disclose stake

The House Ethics Committee on Tuesday said it admonished outgoing Rep. Madison Cawthorn and ordered the North Carolina Republican to pay more than $15,000 for violating conflict of interest rules by publicly promoting a cryptocurrency he owned and for failing to promptly disclose crypto transactions.

The Ethics Committee also said an investigative subcommittee’s report did not find evidence Cawthorn engaged in an improper romantic or sexual relationship with a staffer, with whom he had been seen in videos “engaging in explicit and sexually suggestive comments and conduct.”

Cawthorn’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Ethic Committee’s actions.

The panel’s report comes nearly a month after Cawthorn reportedly vacated his Washington, D.C., and district offices. Cawthorn lost his bid for a second term in May, when he was narrowly defeated in the GOP primary by Chuck Edwards. The Republican Edwards won the general election for the 11th District seat last month.

Cawthorn’s primary contest was wracked by controversy over his conduct, which included being stopped by police repeatedly for having a revoked driver’s license and a misdemeanor citation for bringing a loaded handgun to an airport.

Before the primary, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., blasted Cawthorn for claiming in a podcast interview that other members of Congress had invited him to orgies and done cocaine in front of him.

Days after Cawthorn lost to Edwards, the Ethics Committee revealed it was probing the representative for possibly improper promotion of the so-called Let’s Go Brandon coin and for a possible improper relationship with a staffer.

Just four days after the investigation came to light, Cawthorn belatedly disclosed in public filings that he bought Let’s Go Brandon cryptocurrrency on Dec. 21. He made the purchase eight days before he wrote a Dec. 29 Instagram post that said, “Tomorrow we go to the moon,” in response to a photo of him posing with co-founders of the coin.

In the same filing, Cawthorn belatedly disclosed that he had bought Ethereum cryptocurrency in December 2021.

The disclosure came five months after the crypto transactions. By law, members of Congress must disclose purchases and sales of stocks, bonds, commodity futures and other securities within 45 days of when they took place.

In its report Tuesday, the Ethics panel said that the investigative subcommittee found that Cawthorn’s purchase price of $150,000 for 180 billion Let’s Go Brandon coin “was on more generous terms than were available to the general public, resulting in an improper gift.”

That subcommittee did not reach a conclusion on whether the congressperson had intended to personally profit from his promoting the LGB coin on Dec. 29.

Article source: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/06/madison-cawthorn-sanctioned-by-house-ethics-committee-over-crypto-holding.html