A staffer who claims to have been fired by Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) claimed the young lawmaker did ‘illegal’ things to her and ripped him as a ‘bad person’ in leaked audio released on Monday.
Lisa Wiggins, who was a caseworker in Cawthorn’s office, indicated she had filed an employment-related lawsuit against the Republican firebrand.
In a leaked 16-minute phone call published by a political fundraising operation nicknamed ‘Fire Madison Cawthorn,’ the former staffer describes jaw-dropping conditions in the lawmaker’s one North Carolina office — and claims he closed the rest after neglecting to hire enough caseworkers to run them.
Wiggins claimed she was not allowed to take leave from work when her husband suffered a heart attack and her uncle died in the span of a single week.
‘What he’s done to me was illegal, morally wrong, you name it, it’s been done,’ Wiggins said.
Without invoking Cawthorn’s name, she also said, ‘As far as the candidate himself, I mean, he’s just a bad person.
‘He’s a habitual liar and he’s going to say and do anything he can to your face but behind your back he’s completely opposite,’ Wiggins claimed.
Cawthorn’s Hendersonville, North Carolina office allegedly has ‘more liquor bottles than they do water bottles’ and even had animals like puppies and kittens running around.
‘He’s got a litter box in there, for Heaven’s sakes,’ Wiggins said.
‘People need to know how this man really is. He’s still got a lot of people fooled,’ an ex-staffer of Madison Cawthorn’s said in a leaked phone call
She also said of her ex-boss, ‘People need to know how this man really is. He’s still got a lot of people fooled.’
North Carolina law requires just one participating party’s consent to record a telephone conversation. The contents of the explosive call were first reported by Smoky Mountain News.
Wiggins suggested on the call multiple times that she has ‘a lot of good stories’ about Cawthorn but was hesitant about providing them over the phone.
‘Of course I’ve got a lot of information against the candidate himself… only I would know these things and people would put it together that it was me,’ she can be heard explaining.
Some of those involve his apparently hard-partying ways — even as Cawthorn still deals with the fallout from claiming he was invited to a cocaine-fueled orgy by more senior members of Congress.
‘A lot of it’s the partying and the drinking,’ she said of the information she had. ‘I mean drinking like crazy, partying.’
Her list of accusations against the 26-year-old pro-Trump member of Congress also extend to his constituents, claiming he ‘doesn’t care’ about the people he was elected to serve.
The former staffer, Lisa Wiggins, said she had a lot of ‘good stories’ about the young congressman that involve his ‘drinking like crazy, partying’
She also accused the Republican of only helping his constituents when he needs to gin up support back home in his district
Wiggins also said she had stories to share about Cawthorn’s divorce from his wife of less than a year
For instance, she said he closed all of his district offices but one. And rather than informing constituents of the change, he allegedly uses call-forwarding to channel all calls to Hendersonville.
Wiggins said she knew that was true because she ‘drove and closed them all.’
‘He didn’t have enough caseworkers to man them. He didn’t care, he doesn’t care about his constituents. He does not care,’ she said.
Commenting on the physical size of Cawthorn’s partially-rural district, she continued: ‘If you come from Cherokee County you’re driving five hours to see your congressman.’
‘But you can’t see your congressman anyway when you go to the office. There’s no way you can get a meeting with him unless he’s trying to pull some votes and that’s about the only way,’ she said.
Cawthorn quickly made a national name for himself with bombastic, controversial statements and ironclad support for former President Trump
The former staffer also claimed that sexual assault allegations against the sitting lawmaker from before he came to Congress were at least partially true.
‘I know all of that’s not true, but I know some of it is,’ she said of the allegations.
Multiple women have accused Cawthorn of taking them on what he called ‘fun rides’ when he was a teen and during college.
A former college classmate told CNN, ‘His MO was to take vulnerable women out on these rides with him in the car, and to make advances.’
Another woman who went to Patrick Henry College with Cawthorn told Buzzfeed News that he had grabbed her thigh under her dress.
She claimed that he took her for a drive, then when she rejected his advances, he turned the car around and sped back at an alarming speed.
Former classmate Caitlin Coulter said one ride with Cawthorn made her feel ‘so uncomfortable and nervous.’
Cawthorn said in a debate during his first House campaign, ‘I have never done anything sexually inappropriate in my life.’
In her leaked phone call, Wiggins seemed to indicate that an account from Cawthorn’s time from Patrick Henry is true.
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