The husband of a congressional aide who died by suicide last year following an alleged affair with Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) slammed the lawmaker for touting his “family values.”
“The man has no values,” widower Adrian Aviles told CNN’s Erin Burnett Wednesday. “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.”
Several Republicans called on Gonzales to resign or suspend his reelection campaign in the wake of 2024 text messages between him and staffer Regina Santos-Aviles, the wife of Adrian Aviles. In one text message, the lawmaker had allegedly asked her for a “sexy pic.”
Gonzales denied the affair allegations, claiming he is being blackmailed, and refused to resign. He told CNN’s Manu Raju “what you’ve seen is not all the facts.”
Aviles told Burnett that his marriage fell apart following his discovery of the affair, saying that his wife entered a depressive episode before she ultimately took her own life by setting herself on fire.
“Look, I’m not saying he’s the one that went out there and did it himself, and I’m not saying that, but, yeah, he played a role in it,” Aviles told Burnett. “He predatorized my wife, and he pushed her to the sense of having an affair. I mean, I made that evident in the messages that are released.”
Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) is accused of having an affair with a congressional staffer who died by suicide
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Aviles told Burnett that Gonzales’ denial made him “angrier,” accusing the lawmaker of “deflecting.” He said he has only “released a tip of the iceberg, of the things that this man was telling her.”
“My biggest thing is protecting my son,” Aviles said, adding that he will “not release the salacious messages” that he said are “much more graphic” than what he already released.
He went on bashing Gonzales and denied any political motivation behind releasing the text messages.
“I care about facts. I care about what he has done and how he’s continued to lie on Regina’s name,” Aviles said. “He’s sitting there, and just, he’s bold-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.”
