Republican Madison Cawthorn cited for carrying gun in his bag at airport
The far-right North Carolina Republican congressman Madison Cawthorn is facing a misdemeanor criminal charge after police at an airport in his home state said they found a gun in his bag Tuesday.
Police at Charlotte Douglas international airport handed Cawthorn, 26, a municipal citation accusing him of possessing a dangerous weapon on city property, officers said in a statement.
Police didn’t arrest Cawthorn, instead essentially issuing him a ticket summoning him to return to court at a later date to answer to the weapon charge. They also confiscated the gun.
Cawthorn, whom police described as “cooperative” with officers, didn’t immediately comment on his encounter with officers at the airport Tuesday.
According to police, officers at the airport’s security screening checkpoint spotted a gun in a bag belonging to Cawthorn. The congressman was nearby and admitted that the gun was his.
A municipal law in Charlotte, the largest city in North Carolina, prohibits people from possessing guns on airport and other property owned by the city government. Anyone convicted of the misdemeanor could get up to 120 days in jail and be fined by both the city government as well as the federal Transportation Security Administration.
Cawthorn, who took office early last year, has often landed in controversy.
The rightwing gadfly and supporter of Donald Trump riled up senior members of his Republican party over his claims of being invited to orgies and of having witnessed prominent figures using cocaine in Washington DC.
Cawthorn has also accumulated a number of speeding tickets across multiple states in recent years, including a charge that he drove despite having his license revoked in a county west of Charlotte.
Tuesday was not the first time law enforcement officials have reportedly found a gun on Cawthorn at an airport. TSA agents at the regional airport in Cawthorn’s hometown of Asheville, North Carolina, seized a pistol from his bag in February 2021.
He was not charged criminally in that case.