The husband of a congressional staffer who committed suicide after allegedly having an affair with Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) said he has a trove of texts from the lawmaker “that show how gross of a man he is.”
In September, Gonzales staffer Regina Ann Santos-Aviles doused herself in gasoline and set herself on fire. She died the next day. Her husband, Adrian Aviles, has said his late wife admitted to having an affair with Gonzales in May 2024, two or three weeks after it began. Aviles asked Santos-Aviles to quit her job, but she declined to do so. This week, 24Sight News published alleged texts from May 2024, in which Gonzales asked Santos-Aviles to send him a “sexy pic.” Santos-Aviles demurred and ultimately responded, “This is going too far, boss.”
A handful of House Republicans have called on Gonzales, who is married, to resign or drop his reelection bid, but he has so far rejected them.
Aviles joined Wednesday’s edition of OutFront on CNN, where he told host Erin Burnett that Gonzales is “a sick man.”
“The man has no values,” Aviles said. “He runs his whole campaign on family values, and he runs everything saying that he’s some family man. He’s actually quite a sick man. I have all the messages that’s shared between them two. And the things that– I just released a tip of the iceberg of the things that this man was telling her. I released just what was enough information for the people to understand who this person is and who they’re dealing with.”
Aviles went on to say that he does not intend to release all the texts because some are “salacious” and “graphic,” and that he wants to protect his son.
“What will you do, Adrian, if he doesn’t resign, if he continues here?” Burnett asked.
Aviles responded:
I’ve already done my part, as far as letting people know who he is… Again, Erin, this is not a political thing for me. I want everybody to know that I don’t care two cents about the whole political matter behind it. I don’t care that, you know it’s two seats in the– I don’t care about all of that. You know I care about facts. I care about what he has done and how he’s continued to lie on Regina’s name. You know, he’s sitting there and just bald-faced, lied about it, about everything. And to say that the facts are gonna come out, I would bet that he does not want me to release all of the messages that show how gross of a man he is.
Watch above via CNN.
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