Texas Rep. Tony Gonzales submitted his resignation to the U.S. House on Tuesday amidst the unveiling of a sexual misconduct scandal that led to his former aide dying by suicide in September 2025, stepping down from the position for the remainder of his term.

Following the revelation of the scandal, the U.S. House Ethics Committee launched a probe into Gonzales’s relationship with his aide in order to determine whether the congressman violated the U.S. House code of conduct barring members of Congress from engaging in sexual misconduct toward their staffers.

In recent days, a former campaign staffer working under Gonzales revealed that the congressman’s scandal extended deeper than initially reported, with Gonzales engaging in sexual misconduct not only with his former aide, Regina Santos-Aviles, but also with other staffers, including the staffer who came forward, by soliciting nude photos and asking to have sex via text messages.

The series of sexual misconduct scandals surrounding Gonzales first began with his affair with a former subordinate, Regina Santos-Aviles, which brought a U.S. House Ethics Committee probe into the scene. Following media reports detailing his first scandal and the investigation launched by the committee, Gonzales declared on March 6 that he was dropping his bid for re-election. Although Gonzales stated that he would remain in office for the remainder of his term, when another former subordinate came forward exposing the true scope of his misconduct left him with no choice but to resign.

Two years prior to the congressman’s acknowledgment of committing sexual misconduct involving his former aide and resigning from his position, text messages extracted from the aide’s phone revealed the conversation between the two that set ablaze various controversies regarding Gonzales’s relationship with his subordinate. According to CBS News, the text exchange involved explicit messages where, in one of the obtained texts, Gonzales asked his former aide, Regina Santos-Aviles, to send a “sexy pic.” After the messages were released to the media, Gonzales kept silent, refraining from addressing whether the scandal took place until the 2025 Texas Tribune Festival, where he broke his silence, disputing the claims as “completely untruthful” in one of the panels he attended.

On February 19, Texas Rep. Tony Gonzales disclosed in a post on X that he was being “blackmailed” by individuals incentivized to “profit politically and financially off a tragic death.” The post also included a cropped screenshot of an email allegedly sent by the former aide’s husband’s lawyer, Robert Barrera, asking for a settlement of up to $300,000 in exchange for a non-disclosure agreement. Barrera, regarding the congressman’s accusations of blackmail, said in an interview that the shared screenshot does not reflect the full truth, but was rather intentionally cropped to hide the portion of the email that listed the explicit text messages. Although Barrera did not disclose exactly what was said in the exchange, he characterized the messages as demonstrating Gonzales’s full commitment to the relationship.

That same day, Regina Santos-Aviles’s husband, Adrian Aviles, responded to the congressman’s X post, labeling him a “two-faced politician” and accusing him of “evasion, refusal to take accountability, and outright lies to protect your image.” Aviles not only refuted Gonzales’s blackmail claims, but also revealed that his family possesses the full police report and bodycam footage documenting Regina’s final moments before she succumbed to her severe burns as a result of self-immolation.

Despite previously denying his involvement in the scandal, Texas Rep. Tony Gonzales acknowledged for the first time ever that he “made a mistake” when asked about the controversy on March 4 during an appearance on “The Joe Pags Show,” a conservative radio program hosted by Joe Pagliarulo. Gonzales referred to the affair as a “lapse in judgment” and stated he was “shocked just as much as everyone else” regarding the death of his former aide, Regina Santos-Aviles. Gonzales’s admission came just hours after the U.S. House Ethics Committee launched a formal probe into his relationship with the subordinate to determine if he violated the congressional code of conduct based on the evidence surrounding her suicide.

Following the public release of the text exchanges, Texas Rep. Tony Gonzales faced intense bipartisan backlash, with lawmakers from both parties urging him to step down. Although he initially told Joe Pagliarulo he had no intention of resigning, the congressman ultimately submitted his resignation from the U.S. House on Tuesday, April 14, just one month after his radio appearance. In a public statement issued the day prior to his resignation, Gonzales remarked, ‘There is a season for everything and God has a plan for us all.’