March 28, 2024

Congresswoman Madison Cawthorne fined $15,000 for promoting Let's Go Brandon memcoin

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Congressman Madison Cawthorn fined $15,000 for promoting Let's Go Brandon memecoin

The House Ethics Committee punished a US Republican congressman for advertising the Let’s Go Brandon (LETSGO) cryptocurrency.

According to
Committee Report, Madison CawthornCawthorn inappropriately promoted the meme cryptocurrency LETSGO for personal gain. Following his unreported $150,000 purchase of LETSGO in December 2021, Cawthorn posted explicit promotional comments on social media. The committee claims that Cawthorn was able to transact using these tokens on more favorable terms than those that were available to the general public.

An unknown user received fromCawthorne $150 000 for 180 billion LETSGO. According to the report, the parliamentarian still owns 15.3 billion LETSGO. The committee calculated the difference of $14,237 between Cawthorn's payment and the average value of the tokens during the period in which he received them as a gift. The committee considered it appropriate for the congressman to pay a $1,000 fine for refusing to report the purchase of tokens, as well as a $14,000 fine that would go to charity.

It is known that after purchasetokens Cawthorn sold almost all of them in three transactions, receiving a loss of about $7,500 by the end of January 2022. Therefore, the Committee was unable to determine whether the Congressman benefited financially from his promotional activities. The committee concluded that the politician's failure to report token transactions was not intentional, since the regulatory requirement to disclose such information was introduced relatively recently.

Let us recall that the Committee's investigation into the congressman was initiated at the request of Republican Thomas Tillis, who accused his colleague of insider trading.