U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) is being implicated by two well-known watchdog groups in what is being called a possible illegal insider trading “pump-and-dump cryptocurrency scheme.”
The right-wing Washington Examiner broke the story, reporting that the North Carolina Republican “may have violated federal insider trading laws.”
Cawthorn repeatedly appeared to promote a cryptocurrency’s “meme coin” called “Let’s Go Brandon,” a direct attack on President Joe Biden.
“On Dec. 29, the beleaguered North Carolina congressman posed at a party with James Koutoulas, a hedge fund manager and the ringleader” of the LGB cryptocurrency coin, The Examiner reports.
“LGB legends. … Tomorrow we go to the moon!” Cawthorn, who has stated publicly he owns the cryptocurrency, posted on Instagram in response to the picture posted on Koutoulas’s Instagram page.
The next day, LGBCoin did exactly as the lawmaker predicted.
“This looks really, really bad,” Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette told The Examiner. Hedtler-Gaudette is the government affairs manager for the federal watchdog group Project on Government Oversight (POGO). “This does look like a classic case of you got some insider information and acting on that information. And that’s illegal.”
Another watchdog group says Cawthorn may have committed an illegal act that could land him in jail.
“Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen, said if Cawthorn purchased LGBCoin before Dec. 30 with nonpublic knowledge of the cryptocurrency’s pending deal with Brown, that would constitute insider trading, a federal crime that can involve prison time,” The Examiner adds.
Here are a few of the appearances Cawthorn and Koutoulas made together:
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