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The US House representative Tony Gonzales, a Republican from Texas, admitted to having an affair with an aide who died by suicide last year.
Gonzales acknowledged the affair in an interview with the conservative media personality known as Joe Pags.
“Very direct, Pags, I made a mistake – I had a lapse in judgment and it was a lack of faith, and I take full responsibility for those actions,” Gonzales said. “Since then, I’ve reconciled with my wife, Angel. I’ve asked God to forgive me, which he has, and my faith is as strong as ever.”
The revelation from Gonzales came shortly after the House ethics committee said it had opened an investigation into allegations into the representative, including his affair.
The top Republican and Democratic members on the committee said in a joint statement that an investigative panel would look into whether Gonzales engaged in sexual misconduct toward an employee in his office and whether he discriminated unfairly by dispensing special favors or privileges.
Gonzales said he had not spoken with the former staffer, Regina Ann Santos-Aviles, for a year before she died.
“I had absolutely nothing to do with her tragic passing,” Gonzales said. “And in fact I was shocked as much as everyone else.”
Shortly after Santos-Aviles’s death, Gonzales said, a lawyer for her widower, Adrian Aviles, contacted him.
The lawyer “essentially asked for money ‘or else’”, Gonzales said. “They asked for $300K. The thing is, Pags, I don’t have $300,000. And if I did have $300,000, I’m not going to give it to somebody who’s trying to shake me down. This was always about money.”
Gonzales reported liquid assets totaling at most $75,000 in his most recent financial disclosure form.
Gonzales made a similar allegation last month. But Santos-Aviles’s lawyer, Bobby Barrera, told CBS News that Gonzales had mischaracterized legitimate claims that his client was pursuing under the Congressional Accountability Act, which governs workplace mistreatment and for which the maximum penalty is $300,000.
Barrera has said his client found out about the affair before his wife’s death.
The congressman, now in his third term, has said he would not step down, telling reporters at the US Capitol recently that there will be opportunities for all the details and facts to come out.
“What you’ve seen is not all the facts,” Gonzales said.
Gonzales, a father of six, first won his seat in 2020 after retiring from a 20-year career in the navy that included time in Iraq and Afghanistan. On Tuesday, he was forced into a May runoff against Brandon Herrera, a gun manufacturer and YouTube gun-rights influencer who narrowly lost to Gonzales in the 2024 primary.
The San Antonio Express-News reported that it had obtained text messages in which the former Gonzales staffer wrote to a colleague that she had an affair with the congressman.
Santos-Aviles, 35, died in September 2025 after setting herself on fire in the back yard of her home in Uvalde, Texas. The Bexar county medical examiner’s office later ruled her death a suicide.
