In 2014, Republican Congressman Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina was in a car crash that resulted in his partial paralysis.
He said in his account of the crash, delivered in a college chapel in 2017, that a close friend had crashed the car and left him to die "in a fiery tomb."
In a recent exposé by The Washington Post, however, several witnesses came forward to attest to the lies in Cawthorn's story.
One of those is Cawthorn's "close friend" who he claimed left him in the burning car.
Bradley Ledford, Cawthorn's friend, commented for the first time on the accident, saying of the Congressman's account:
"It hurt very badly that he would say something as false as that. That is not at all what happened. I pulled him out of the car the second that I was able to get out of the car."
Cawthorn also claimed he was "declared dead" after the crash and he was preparing to begin studies at the U.S. naval academy prior to the accident.
The Post revealed neither of these claims, which Cawthorn used to further his Congressional bid, were true.
The future GOP Congressman was described in a police report of the accident as "incapacitated" which is a far cry from dead.
And Cawthorn was rejected by the Naval Academy before his injury.
Cawthorn also previously lied about preparing for the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics.
Controversies surrounding Cawthorn seem to be multiplying.
The day prior to The Post's exposé, Buzzfeed News published an article detailing innumerable accounts of Cawthorn's sexual misconduct in college.
150 of Cawthorn's former classmates signed a claim citing his objectionable college behavior.
The North Carolina Republican's willingness to lie shouldn't be a surprise considering his refusal to accept Donald Trump's loss in the 2020 elections despite admitting "the election was not fraudulent."
At 25, Cawthorn is Congress' youngest member, but he has already made a name for himself as someone who is willing to sacrifice the truth for political gain.
@kileywrestling/Bluesky
