The Seduction Of Madison Cawthorn

Which Republicans Tried Getting Into Cawthorn's Pants?

The final word in all things closet-related among Republican congressmen doesn't like spilling the beans-- unless he's drunk, which he often is. I set a young guy he likes over to talk with him last night... with a good bottle of wine. They had barely popped the cork when the steamed senior Rep started babbling away about how handsome Madison Cawthorn, while giggling. He also refused to give any names about who hosts the Republican orgies, but when my friend pressed him on some of the top suspects-- Patrick McHenry (R-NC), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Matt Gaetz (R-FL)-- the giggles were noticeably loudest when McHenry's name was mentioned.

Once a p.r. guy and dirty-trickster for Karl Rove, McHenry was elected to Congress in 2004, besting his runoff opponent by just 85 votes. He boasted that no other Republican would ever get to the right of him. "I'll be the example for everyone else in Congress to follow." At the time, few voters knew that McHenry is a wild and wooly closet case and was likely more than a little connected to the murders of a former male hustler he hired, Jason Robert Drake... and at least 2 others. I wrote about the triple murder/suicide in 2007: The murdered gay Republicans included Ralph Reed's purported ex-lover, Ralph Gonzalez (former head of the rabidly homophobic Georgia Republican Party), David Abrami and McHenry guy-pal Robert Drake, the shooter. All three were found last week in a murder-suicide in an Orlando apartment. According to right-wing website, the North Carolina Conservative "All three men were active in Republican politics." They mention that Drake is "an associate" of McHenry's but don't define that. He is alleged to be an associate of quite a few younger men, some of whom are gay and some of whom are just gay-for-pay.

Gonzalez was an influential political consultant, who owned Strategum Group, and managed Congressman Tom Feeny’s 2002 campaign. The house was owned by Gonzalez; Abrami lived with Gonzalez. Newspapers and political websites have been abuzz with posts from friends and associates of Gonzalez, who speculate the motive for the murder-suicide as being a gay love triangle gone wrong.

...Another, more sinister motive has been put forth by several sources, including CrimeBlog.us. Reporters there say that Drake was associated with the owner of a gay escort service in the Virginia Beach area. The owners of that escort service are facing charges that they murdered the owner of a rival company catering to the gay community. A source for the Crime Blog reporter states:

“My solid, but unconfirmed, sources say that Drake was trying to hit Gonzalez up for cash to raise money to defend a kid (Harlow Cuadra) who is on trial for murder up in Pennsylvania. The 26 year old “kid” ran a gay escort and porn business in Virginia Beach and may have had several Republican clients-- Drake being one. (See www.norfolkmaleescorts.com and www.boybatter.com). . . My sources say Drake may have approached Gonzalez for funds for Cuadra’s defense, threatening to blow the lid off everything by MAKING THE REPUBLICAN CLIENT LIST OF THE GAY ESCORT BUSINESS PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE.”

Soon after, McHenry married Giulia Cangiano (a woman) with whom he doesn't live. He also moved from radical fringe to more mainstream conservative and is now the top Republican (ranking member and slated for the chair) of the House Financial Services Committee, the most corrupt committee in Congress, where he has done the bidding of payday lenders, banksters, subprime mortgage crooks, etc. He raises immense sums of money from the outfits the Financial Services Committee is supposed to be overseeing and he helped prevent legislation to ban congressional stock trading.

He's only going to be 47 in October but maybe that seems like a dirty old man to a chicken like Cawthorn. And it may be significant that Cawthorn brought the cocaine and orgies narrative up because of the myriad allegations against him for being a predator himself-- no longer; nothing works-- when he was pursuing underage girls in a Christian college and didn't know how to take "no" for an answer.

Cawthorn is in grave danger of losing his seat in the GOP primary... and that was even before Kevin McCarthy announced yesterday-- after an eruption of anger from congressional Republicans about the cocaine and orgies-- that he would have a stern talk with Cawthorn about his behavior. Not what Republicans need from its own QAnon loons and their conspiracy theory mill.

Politico reported that "During a closed-door House GOP conference meeting on Tuesday, multiple Republicans in the room said lawmakers stood up to air their anger and frustration over Cawthorn portraying his own colleagues as bacchanalian and sexual deviants. In one case, Rep. Steve Womack (R-AR) stood up and addressed his colleagues, telling them that he rarely speaks during the closed-door weekly meetings but felt he must address the topic because he's now getting questions about participants in Cawthorn's alleged orgies and drug use. Womack remarked that many lawmakers go to bed at 9 p.m. and still use fax machines and flip phones, stating that it was inappropriate to paint them with a broad brush, as Cawthorn did... Many GOP lawmakers privately expressed disbelief at Cawthorn's claims, particularly of orgies. Some wondered if he made the comments consciously in a bid to portray himself above such acts-- past media reports have addressed sexual misconduct allegations against him before his election. There's a desire among fellow Republicans for Cawthorn to identify the colleagues involved to prove the truth of his comments, but that desire to name names could also cause new headaches for a conference that's already faced an array of controversies this Congress."

By the end of yesterday, fellow insurrectionist and far right goon, Scott Perry (R-PA), chair of the neo-Nazi House Freedom Caucus, was threatening to kick Cawthorn out of the group if he doesn't tell him who snorted the coke and who invited him to the orgies. Writing a late afternoon column in the Washington Post, Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman noted that "Cawthorn is one of a new breed of Republican representatives who operate in the most fetid gutters of the new political pathways carved by Donald Trump... basically professional media provocateurs. These lawmakers marinate in various far-right conspiracy theories and other assorted crackpottery, even if they claim to not be adherents. Central to those theories is that the political enemy is not just wrong about policy or ideology, but has created a secret, horrifying world of decadence and perversion. At the far end, QAnon believers think Democratic leaders run a transnational [interplanetary] pedophile ring. While 'respectable' Republicans won’t say that, they will badger a Supreme Court nominee for hours about child pornography, in apparent awareness of how deep QAnon sentiments run within the GOP base."