Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) may have run afoul of insider trading laws with his recent posts pushing a cryptocurrency, federal watchdog groups warn in a Washington Examiner report. The groups flagged Cawthorn’s Instagram posts in December praising the “Let’s Go Brandon” meme coin, which is now at the center of a lawsuit over an alleged pump-and-dump scheme. “Tomorrow we go to the moon!” Cawthorn wrote, saying he owned some of the crypto himself. The post itself wouldn’t have been an issue—if the NASCAR star who inspired the saying, Brandon Brown, hadn’t announced a sponsorship deal with the crypto the very next day. If Cawthorn knew about the deal before it was announced and still touted LGBCoin, that puts him in murky waters legally, some groups said. “Having advance and nonpublic information that is then used to gain advantage in a financial market (including straight up commodities) is illegal, making my call for DOJ or SEC investigation still operative in this case,” said Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, the government affairs manager for Project on Government Oversight. As The Daily Beast reported, a class-action lawsuit by an investor has accused LGBCoin of operating as a pump-and-dump scheme, with celebrities like Cawthorn once helping to increase its value with their public endorsements before insiders jumped ship. Cawthorn’s office did not return the Examiner’s request for comment.
