Rep. Madison Cawthorn, who sought to overturn Biden's win, acknowledges the election 'was not fraudulent'
- GOP Rep. Madison Cawthorn's long-standing claims of voter fraud collapsed Saturday.
- Cawthorn maintained that he contested the election "to hold up the Constitution."
- When pressed by CNN's Pamela Brown to cite specific cases of fraud, Cawthorn was unable to do so.
GOP Rep. Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina entered office pledging to contest Joe Biden's victory in the presidential election.
On the evening of the deadly January 6 riot at the US Capitol, Cawthorn continued to challenge the election results in Arizona and Pennsylvania, emphasizing his focus on election integrity and the Constitution.
During a Saturday interview with CNN's Pamela Brown, however, his argument for contesting the results fell apart.
When Brown asked Cawthorn for evidence supporting claims of voter fraud, he was unable to cite any specific cases.
"The things that I was not objecting to the election on behalf of was things like Dominion voting machines changing ballots or these U-Haul trucks pulling up filled with ballots for Joe Biden as president," he said.
"The thing I was objecting for is things like, like I said in the state of Wisconsin, particularly in the town of Madison … there was an appointed official in that town who actually went against the will of the state legislature and created ballot drop boxes, which is basically ballot harvesting that was happening in the parks."
Brown reminded the 25-year-old freshman congressman that the Trump campaign litigated several Wisconsin ballot issues and lost in court.
When Brown asked whether Cawthorn had seen any specific cases of fraud, he could not come up with an answer.
"So you wanted to throw out millions of votes without actually seeing any concrete evidence of fraud?" Brown asked. "That's what you were doing when you were contesting the election."
Cawthorn then said he contested the election "to hold up the Constitution."
After Brown told Cawthorn that his own state changed election laws in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which was a core part of his earlier argument, he said he was unaware that North Carolina changed any laws.
"I'm actually not aware of the laws that were changed inside of North Carolina," he said. "I believe we had a very safe and very secure election here."
President Donald Trump won North Carolina in November.
Biden won Arizona and Pennsylvania - states where Cawthorn fought the vote certification. He was unable to formally challenge Wisconsin's results because no US senator stepped up to contest the results for the state, which Biden won.
By the end of the interview, Cawthorn's earlier claims of fraud disappeared.
"Yes, I think I would say the election was not fraudulent," he told Brown.
He added: "The Constitution allowed for us to be able to push back as much as we could, and I did that to the amount of the constitutional limits that I had at my disposal, so now I would say that Joseph R. Biden is our president."