US

Judge Blocks Effort To Keep Rep. Madison Cawthorn Off The North Carolina Ballots

(Photo Courtesy of the Committee on Arrangements for the 2020 Republican National Committee via Getty Images)

Kay Smythe News and Commentary Writer
Font Size:

A federal judge blocked an effort to keep North Carolina Republican Rep. Madison Cawthorn off the state’s ballot for the 2022 elections Friday.

Chief District Court Judge Richard Myers said that “the state’s election board can’t proceed with an inquiry that would have delved [into] his role leading up to the Jan. 6 2021 attack on the U.S, Capitol,” WRAL reported. Judge Myer stated he could not allow the challenge from Free Speech for People to continue, according to WECT. (RELATED: Madison Cawthorn Says There Will Be ‘Bloodshed’ If US Elections ‘Continue To Be Rigged’)

Free Speech for People filed the legal challenge against Cawthorn with North Carolina’s State Board of Elections, arguing that he was “constitutionally disqualified from public office under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution based on reasonable suspicion that he helped facilitate the January 6, 2021 insurrection,” its website stated.

North Carolina’s Board of Elections said in a court filing in February that it had the ability to bar Cawthorn, who represents North Carolina’s 11th District in the west of the state, from seeking reelection. (RELATED: Madison Cawthorn Says There Will Be ‘Bloodshed’ If US Elections ‘Continue To Be Rigged’)

“I love this country and have never engaged in, or would ever engage in, an insurrection against the United States,” Cawthorn added. “Regardless of this fact, the Disqualification clause and North Carolina’s Challenge Statute is being used as a weapon by liberal Democrats to attempt to defeat our democracy by having state bureaucrats, rather than the People, choose who will represent North Carolina in Congress.”

With Myers’ ruling, Cawthorn will be allowed to run for Congress again in 2022, reported the Daily Beast. The ruling is still subject to appeal. In an exclusive interview with the Daily Caller, Cawthorn said that Republicans should keep the Jan 6. commission should they take back the house in the 2022 midterms.

“This is a major victory for the people, and a real opportunity for the American people to say, ‘if you come after our representatives, you’re going to get beat,'” Cawthorn told the Daily Caller exclusively. “The judge ruled with an exclamation point. That’s important because we are the people’s voice in government and to defend the right of free speech in America, so this is a great precedent to set.”