Exclusive: Madison Cawthorn photos reveal him wearing women’s lingerie in public setting

His response: North Carolina U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn responded Friday to photos circulating online apparently showing him wearing lingerie and drinking from a wine glass.

The congressman from western North Carolina called the pictures “goofy vacation photos” taken well before he decided to run for Congress.

Cawthorn on Twitter appeared to acknowledge the veracity of the photos, suggesting the images that were first reported by Politico came from a game he participated in during a cruise trip.

Photographs obtained by POLITICO appear to show Madison Cawthorn, the embattled Republican congressman from North Carolina who recently accused his GOP colleagues of inviting him to orgies, wearing lingerie in what appears to be a party setting.

Cawthorn, 26, was raised in a conservative Baptist community in Henderson County, North Carolina, and has staked his political persona on arch-traditional Christian principles and the insistence of the importance of a kind of hypermasculinity. His comments about “the sexual perversion” in Washington made on a podcast, which he later admitted were exaggerated, drew the public disapproval and disavowal of Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy as well as other Republican leaders including those in his North Carolina congressional caucus.