House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., met with first-term Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-N.C., on Wednesday about his claims of colleagues utilizing medication and alluring him to a “sexual get-together.”
McCarthy mentioned he advised Cawthorn that “I lost my trust in him” due to the salacious claims and that there “could be” penalties because of this. He did not specify what these penalties might be.
A supply with information of the assembly advised NBC News that Cawthorn failed to supply any proof of the intercourse and medicines allegations which have outraged his colleagues and that McCarthy warned him he must earn his belief again.
Cawthorn made the allegations throughout an interview final week on the podcast “Warrior Poet Society,” after he was requested whether or not his expertise in Washington, D.C. was just like the scandalous Netflix present “House of Cards.”
Cawthorn then dove right into a monologue about “the sexual perversion that goes on in Washington,” and mentioned a few of his older colleagues had invited him to orgies.
“I mean being kind of a young guy in Washington, where the average age is probably 60 to 70, and I look at all these people, a lot of them that I’ve looked up to through my life — I’ve always paid attention to politics — then all of a sudden you get invited,” Cawthorn mentioned, quoting one such alleged trade.
“‘Oh, hey we’re going to have kind of a sexual get-together at one of our homes. You should come.’ I’m like, what did you just ask me to come to? Then you realize they’re asking you to come to an orgy,” Cawthorn mentioned.
He then continued speaking about “the fact there are some of the people leading on the movement to try and remove addiction in our country, and then you watch them do a key bump of cocaine right in front of you. And you’re like, ‘This is wild.'”
The feedback upset a lot of Cawthorn’s House Republican colleagues, who expressed their frustration to McCarthy in a gathering on Tuesday, Politico reported.
McCarthy advised Axios that Cawthorn acknowledged his claims have been “exaggerated.”
“In the interview, he claims he watched people do cocaine. Then when he comes in he tells me, he says he thinks he saw maybe a staffer in a parking garage from 100 yards away,” McCarthy mentioned.
Cawthorn declined to remark after the assembly, saying, “We’re not doing interviews today.” His workplace didn’t instantly reply to a request for touch upon McCarthy’s remarks.
The 26-year-old North Carolina congressman is aza shut ally of former President Donald Trump who spoke on the Jan. 6 rally earlier than the riot on the U.S. Capitol and has continued selling Trump’s phony election fraud claims since.
He was rebuked publicly by McCarthy earlier this month after he known as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “a thug” whose authorities “is extremely corrupt and is extremely evil and has been pushing woke ideologies.”
“Madison is wrong,” McCarthy mentioned then. Asked if he would nonetheless assist his re-election bid, McCarthy mentioned, “Yes.”
Haley Talbot contributed.