Or however the saying goes.
Hot off an accident in which he slammed his car into the back of a state trooper's vehicle, former U.S. House representative Madison Cawthorn was sworn in as an honorary sheriff's deputy for the Lee County Sheriff's Office last week. The 28-year-old, whose tenure in Congress was spotted with scandals, announced the news in an Instagram post, which featured photos of him posing alongside members of the southwest Florida sheriff's office.
"Such an honor from [Lee County Sheriff] Carmine Marceno to be sworn in as an honorary deputy in the county that I live in," Cawthorn captioned the photos. "Local, constitutional, law enforcement that answers to the people is what our founders intended."
Cawthorn made headlines in April after rear-ending a Florida Highway Patrol cruiser on I-75 in Collier County, which borders Lee County.
Dashcam video obtained by New Times shows the moment he crashed into the patrol car at high speed, propelling it several feet forward and shattering its rear window into tiny pieces. The trooper emerged from the vehicle wincing and paced around on the side of the highway as Cawthorn sat with a blank stare near his car's crushed front end.
Following the violent collision, Cawthorn was cited for violating Florida's so-called "Move Over" law, which requires drivers to yield to and slow down for police and emergency vehicles in the line of duty. The statute entails a non-criminal moving violation with a fine of up to $500.
The former congressman, who served as a U.S. representative for North Carolina's 11th Congressional District from 2021 to 2023, saw his tenure marred by repeated controversy, including allegations that he sexually harassed several of his schoolmates at Patrick Henry College, a Christian school in Virginia. The women said that during so-called "fun rides" in college (private joy rides in his car), Cawthorn made inappropriate comments and unwanted advances to them.
Cawthorn said in a statement, "I have never done anything sexually inappropriate in my life."
Cawthorn was also accused of lying about his personal history and violating insider trading laws. The U.S. House Committee on Ethics fined him $14,000 for failing to file financial disclosures and violating conflict-of-interest rules by promoting the "Let's Go Brandon" (LGB) meme coin while he had a financial interest in it.
In March 2022, he was charged with driving with a revoked license while two speeding tickets were pending.
Cawthorn has been stopped twice for illegally bringing guns into U.S. airports. In February 2021, agents at Asheville Regional Airport found a gun in his carry-on bag. The following year, he was criminally charged with bringing a loaded firearm through a security checkpoint at Charlotte Douglas International. (He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor over the latter incident.)
He lost his re-election bid in the 2022 Republican primary.
In 2014, when he was 18, Cawthorn was seriously injured in a car crash while on his way back to North Carolina from a spring break trip in Florida. He was a passenger in the car during the incident, which left him partially paralyzed.
Carmine Marceno, who runs the sheriff's office that honored Cawthorn, portrays himself as a hard-nosed, "law and order" sheriff. He's made headlines for publishing juvenile suspects' names and showing their faces on camera for video segments. His social media bits show him and his staff raiding alleged drug dealers' houses, rounding up suspects, and doing comedy bits where they crack on arrestees they are bringing to the local jail, which the sheriff calls the "Marceno Motel."
