CHARLOTTE, N.C. _ A North Carolina congressional candidate faced scrutiny Tuesday after three-year-old social media posts went viral that some say signal support for white nationalism.
And media reports also debunked Republican Madison Cawthorn's claim that the accident that left him paralyzed was the reason he did not attend the U.S. Naval Academy.
Cawthorn, 25, won a June primary runoff against Lynda Bennett, a candidate endorsed by President Donald Trump in western North Carolina's 11th Congressional District. He now faces Democrat Morris "Moe" Davis for the seat vacated this year by White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
In 2017 Cawthorn posted pictures on Instagram of a trip with his brother to Adolf Hitler's German mountain retreat. He said the trip to the Eagle's Nest "has been on my bucket list for years. And it did not disappoint." The posts, now gone viral, were reportedly taken down on Monday.
An article Monday in Jezebel, a feminist blog, raised questions about Cawthorn's ties to symbols associated with white nationalism.
Cawthorn was not available for comment, according to spokeswoman Angela Nicholas. On Facebook he posted a defense of the German visit with a photo of Allied troops at the Eagle's Nest.
"When our soldiers from Easy Company were photographed smoking, drinking and smiling at the Eagle's Nest in 1945 they were clearly celebrating the Allies (sic) triumph over one of the greatest evils in human history," Cawthorn posted. "They weren't celebrating evil; they were celebrating their victory over evil. When I visited the Eagle's Nest this was the history I had in mind.
"It was a surreal experience to be remembering their joy in a place where the Nazi regime had plotted unspeakable acts of evil."
But critics such as Davis say other symbols appear to suggest Cawthorn's support for white nationalism.
They include the name of his real estate company, SPQR Holdings. SPQR, an abbreviation of a Latin phrase meaning the Senate and the Roman People, a phrase from the Roman Republic, is often used by white nationalists. His Twitter feed shows he follows 88 people. The number "88" is considered code for Heil Hitler, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
In a recent statement, Cawthorn said, "SPQR is a term for Rome."
"We can't let extremists on any side hijack or rewrite history because those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it ... No one needs to study this history more closely than today's far left politicians who favor authoritarian, centralized and top-down policies."
A photo on his website shows Cawthorn with a military-style rifle and pistol in a holster emblazoned with a Spartan-style helmet, a symbol often used by Oath Keepers, which the ADL describes as "an anti-government right-wing fringe organization." And Cawthorn also has appeared with the so-called Betsy Ross flag, an early American banner also associated with white nationalism.
"The Betsy Ross flag is in some ways ... a more subtle symbol that conveys the same thing as the Confederate flag," said journalist Tom Fiedler. "This was a time that America recognized the supremacy of white men."
Fiedler, a former Pulitzer Prize-winning editor of the Miami Herald, lives in Asheville and runs an investigative site called the AVL Watchdog. He has published articles on Cawthorn this week including one Tuesday that questions his claims about the U.S. Naval Academy.
Cawthorn's website says that he was nominated for the academy by Meadows in 2014. "Madison's plans were derailed that year after he nearly died in a tragic automobile accident that left him partially paralyzed and in a wheelchair," it says. He's made the same claim in campaign speeches.
But the AVL Watchdog story cites Cawthorn's 2017 deposition in a post-accident lawsuit against his insurance company. In the deposition, Cawthorn says he'd been notified before the accident that he had not been accepted to the academy.
His website also describes him as a small businessman. Records filed with the North Carolina Secretary of State show his company, SPQR, was formed a year ago this month. Jezebel could find only a single company transaction, the purchase of a foreclosed 6-acre property in Georgia for $20,000. A financial disclosure that Cawthorn filed with Congress shows up to several million dollars in assets but no "earned" income.
"Clearly it's bad press for Cawthorn," political scientist Chris Cooper of Western Carolina University said Tuesday. "It punctures a bit of the superhero story that's sprung up around him. He needs to answer some questions."
Davis, the Democratic candidate, accused Cawthorn of "playing fast and loose with the facts."
Davis, 62, is a retired Air Force colonel and former chief prosecutor for terrorism trials at Guantanamo Bay. He left that post in 2007 over a dispute involving the use of information obtained through the use of torture, which he opposed. Later assistant director of the Congressional Research Service, he was fired in 2009 for authoring opinion pieces critical of the Obama administration's handling of Guantanamo cases. In 2016 he settled a lawsuit against the CRS.
Cawthorn recently called Davis and other liberals racist.
"White liberals are the most racist people I've ever met in my entire life," he told Blue Ridge public radio. "They define everything by race. They want people to be able to get into college with lower grades and lower school scores simply because they are African American. That's insane ... . Any liberals listening to this right now, you are a racist."
Davis replied that he not only graduated from law school at North Carolina Central University, a historically black school, but taught for four years at Howard University.
"So I've got seven years in the HBCU community," he said. "My opponent was home-schooled, never went to college, never went to law school, has never worked outside of this area."
Cawthorn attended Patrick Henry College, a small Christian college in Virginia. He later testified that he dropped out after a semester after getting mostly Ds.
The 17-county 11th District leans Republican. Trump carried the current version of the district with 57% of the vote in 2016, according to Cooper, the Western Carolina political scientist. But it also has the highest percentage of unaffiliated voters of any district in the state, a fact that could make it competitive.
"It's the best chance the Democrats have had since Heath Shuler," Cooper said, referring to the former Democratic congressman who lost to Meadows in 2012, "partially because of the challenger and partially because of the district lines."
