Lawmaker calls ‘orgy,’ drug claims false

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said Wednesday after meeting with Rep. Madison Cawthorn that the freshman lawmaker was not telling the truth when he made claims about an “orgy” invitation and drug use among unnamed members of Congress.

Cawthorn’s comments, which he made during a podcast interview last week, had angered some of his fellow congressional Republicans, leading to Wednesday’s meeting at the Capitol with McCarthy and other House GOP leaders.

“This is unacceptable,” McCarthy told reporters Wednesday after meeting with Cawthorn, Axios reported. “There’s no evidence to this.”

McCarthy, R-Calif., added that Cawthorn “changes what he tells” and “did not tell the truth,” describing his actions as “not becoming of a congressman.”

Cawthorn, R-N.C., was seen leaving McCarthy’s office Wednesday morning after the meeting, which lasted about half an hour. House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., also attended the meeting, according to Politico.

“There’s a lot of different things that can happen. But I just told him he’s lost my trust. He’s going to have to earn it back,” McCarthy told reporters, according to Politico. “I mean, he’s got a lot of members very upset.”

A McCarthy spokesman confirmed the leader’s remarks. Spokespeople for Scalise and Cawthorn did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In an interview last week with the “Warrior Poet Society” podcast, Cawthorn was asked whether the hit television show “House of Cards” was an accurate reflection of life in the nation’s capital. Cawthorn responded by talking about the “sexual perversion that goes on in Washington” and suggested that he had been invited to an “orgy” by an unnamed lawmaker.

“I mean, being kind of a young guy in Washington, where the average age is probably 60 or 70 — you know, I look at all these people, a lot of them that I’ve always looked up to through my life, always paid attention to politics, guys that, you know. Then all of the sudden you get invited to, like, ‘Oh hey, we’re going to have kind of a sexual get-together at one of our homes. You should come,’” Cawthorn said in the interview, which was reported Sunday by Business Insider. “And I’m like, ‘What? What did you just ask me to come to?’ And then you realize they’re asking you to come to an orgy.”

Cawthorn also claimed that he had witnessed unnamed prominent figures in Washington doing cocaine.

“Or the fact that, you know, there’s some of the people that are 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 it’s like, this is wild,” he said.

During a weekly private conference meeting on Tuesday, several House Republicans voiced anger at Cawthorn’s remarks, Politico reported.

Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., stood up at the meeting and told his colleagues that Cawthorn’s comments did not describe House Republicans as a whole, and that some of his constituents have been asking him about the North Carolina lawmaker’s remarks, according to the report. A Womack spokesperson confirmed that the congressman addressed Cawthorn’s remarks during Tuesday’s GOP conference meeting.

Some Senate Republicans have expressed frustration about Cawthorn’s comments as well. Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., called Cawthorn an “embarrassment at times,” while Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said the lawmaker has a “lack of judgment” and had “not done much” for his House district, the Daily Beast reported.

On Wednesday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., questioned why Republican lawmakers had voiced anger over Cawthorn’s comments but not over the federal sex-trafficking investigation into Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla.

“Not sure why Republicans are acting so shocked by Cawthorn’s alleged revelations about their party,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a tweet. “One of their members is being investigated for sex trafficking a minor and they’ve been pretty OK w/ that. They issued more consequences to members who voted to impeach Trump.”

Cawthorn, 26, was elected to Congress in 2020 and represents North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District.