CHARLOTTE, N.C. (QUEEN CITY NEWS) — Queen City News has obtained North Carolina Highway Patrol dashcam video showing a traffic stop involving Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) after he was pulled over in Cleveland County in March and charged with driving with a revoked license.
Cawthorn, a Henderson County Republican representing North Carolina’s 11th Congressional district, was pulled over on March 3 – the third time the politician had been stopped since October 2021.
The first traffic stop came on October 18, 2021, on Interstate 40 in Buncombe County for driving 89 miles per hour in a 65 mph zone.
Cawthorn was pulled over again on January 8, 2022, on US 74 in Polk County for driving 87 mph in a 70 mph zone.
The representative was driving a white, 20098 Dodge in both stops.
On March 3, Cawthorn was pulled over again. Authorities said he was driving on US 74B around 10:30 p.m. in Cleveland County in a 2019 Toyota pickup that went left of center.
During the stop, investigators learned that Cawthorn’s license had been revoked.
In the dashcam video, a North Carolina trooper informs approached the truck and told Cawthorn his tag was expired. He took his driver’s license back to the cruiser and ran it through the system.
That is when the trooper discovered the license had been revoked due to an “out-of-state” ticket.
“Unfortunately, I’ve gotta take your license,” the trooper said to the congressman at the driver’s-side window, explaining there was a “pickup order.”
“Is that so?” said Cawthorn in reply.
The audio in the video is inaudible at times, but an unidentified woman in the passenger seat exits the vehicle and carries Cawthorn’s wheelchair to his side of the vehicle.
Cawthorn gets into the chair and goes toward the passenger side while telling the patrolman to “have a good night.”
He was charged with a Class 3 misdemeanor charge of driving with a revoked license.
The Asheville Citizen-Times reported that Cawthorn was charged with driving with a revoked license in 2017 in Buncombe County. That charge was later dismissed.
After the incident in March, a representative for Cawthorn told Queen City News that the congressman expects “the traffic matters to be resolved quickly and we remain focused on serving the constituents of NC-11.”
A court date for his incident in Cleveland County is May 6.