On Saturday, Buzzfeed News published a report interviewing over three dozen people from Cawthorn’s past who corroborated accounts that the now freshman Republican congressman has a history cornering women with sexual advances. According to the report, Cawthorn would take women on “fun drives” during his time at Patrick Henry College where he would allegedly take women on back roads routes around campus and attempt to kiss or touch them inappropriately. Cawthorn is accused of pressuring one woman to sit on his lap, and when she resisted his attempts to kiss her, he allegedly held her face in place so she couldn’t get away.
Over 150 of Cawthorn’s former classmates signed a letter confirming the veracity of the allegations made against him. “During his brief time at the college,” it read, “Cawthorn established a reputation for predatory behavior. His modus operandi was to invite unsuspecting women on ‘joy rides’ in his white Dodge Challenger. Cawthorn would take young women to secluded areas, lock the doors, and proceed to make unwanted sexual advances.”
Cawthorn was also accused by several former classmates of making racist and sexist comments throughout his time in college. In one instance, Cawthorn allegedly asked a former friend: “Which race of girls gives the best blowjobs?” Cawthorn is also accused of routinely bragging about his car-involved “conquests” and claiming that “girls like that stuff.” His small posse of men was known on campus as “the douche crew.”
Although it’s not the first time these allegations have surfaced, many of the details are new. Cawthorn, for his part, has vehemently denied them. Back in September of 2020, Cawthorn told CNN, “I have never done anything sexually inappropriate in my life.”
“If I have a daughter,” he said last year in a town hall debate, “I want her to grow up in a world where people know to explicitly ask before touching her. If I had a son, I want him to be able to grow up in a world where he would not be called a sexual predator for trying to kiss someone.”
On Saturday, the Washington Post brought forward a new claim made against Cawthorn: He lied about the car crash which left him partially paralyzed. According to the report, Cawthorn’s account both exaggerates key details of the story, which he recounted in 2017 during a chapel address at Patrick Henry College:
“He was my brother, my best friend. And he leaves me in a car to die in a fiery tomb. He runs to safety deep in the woods and just leaves me in a burning car as the flames start to lick my legs and curl up and burn my left side. Fortunately, there was several bystanders who come by and they break the window open that they pulled me out to safety and they sat me down. The paramedics arrive and decided that I’m gone and I have no pulse, I have no breath. And I was, I was declared dead on the scene. For whatever reason, may it be adrenaline or divine intervention, I definitely believe it’s the latter, I had a deep inhale of breath.”
The friend detailed in Cawthorn’s story, however, gave the Post a very different account of what transpired