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CawthWatch: Fired district aide claims congressman violated labor law

By Lightning Reports, Published: April 18, 2022

A fired aide in U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn's Hendersonville office said she plans to file a labor violation claim against her former boss during a phone call during which she dished plenty of other damaging information about the embattled freshman incumbent.

“What he’s done to me was illegal, morally wrong, you name it, it’s been done,” Lisa Wiggins, a committed campaign volunteer in 2020 who became an aide based in Hendersonville, said in a phone call to the leader of the PAC that calls itself Fire Madison Cawthorn.

During the call, Wiggins told the PAC leader, David Wheeler, that she planned to file a complaint alleging that the congressional office's refusal to give her time off to deal with a family death and her husband's heart attack violated the Family and Medical Leave Act, reporter Cory Vaillancourt wrote in the Smoky Mountain News.

Wiggins, 46, also said in the call that Cawthorn had closed all of his district offices except for the Hendersonville office, and was using call forwarding to send constituent service to Hendersonville.

“I know that because I drove and closed them all,” she said. “He didn’t have enough caseworkers to man them. He didn’t care, he doesn’t care about his constituents. He does not care.”

'Left and media' ride Cawthorn 'distraction'

 
Also on Monday, Cawthorn's constituents heard directly his take on how the the media is using a comment he made about sex and cocaine in Washington to disparage Republicans and "falsely insinuate their involvement in illicit activities."
 
"My comments on a recent podcast appearance calling out corruption in DC have been used by the left and the media to disparage my Republican colleagues and falsely insinuate their involvement in illicit activities," Cawthorn said in a newsletter issued Monday. "But the swamp is trying to use it as a distraction, as an excellent recent article in The Federalist pointed out."
 
“The scandal, however, is nothing more than a distraction from Democrats presiding over an increasingly depressed nation coping with severe economic uncertainty with excess sugar, alcohol, and opioids," the Federalist article said. "Meanwhile, as Republicans prepare to discipline Cawthorn, Democrat Rep. Eric Swalwell continues to serve on the House Intelligence Committee with access to the nation’s top secrets despite a relationship likely turned romantic with a suspected Chinese spy."