Being MAGA Means Never Resigning, Even When Your Alleged Affair Turns Deadly

Even by the standards of congressional scandals and dalliances, the following story is decidedly on the salacious side. It involves not only an alleged (and supported by tons of evidence) affair between a Republican member of Congress and their own staffer, but also the death via suicide of that staffer, accusations of blackmail, and the possibility of another alleged affair on the part of a husband whose statements about his wife also raise eyebrows. This story, in other words, is icky from just about every angle. It’s also a perfect microcosm of MAGA world’s number one axiom, as drilled into Donald Trump so long ago by a snake like Roy Cohn: Admit nothing, deny everything, never admit defeat. Trump should be proud of Texas Rep. Tony Gonzales’ application of that credo here.

Gonzales is a Navy veteran who has served as the U.S. representative for Texas’ 23rd congressional district since 2021, representing a vast stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border. Perhaps surprisingly, he’s actually not among the state’s more far-right congressmen, having been the only GOP vote in Texas for the Respect for Marriage Act in 2022, which codified same-sex marriage and Obergefell v. Hodges into federal law. He’s a family man, a Catholic, and the father of six children. But he’s apparently not a great Catholic, as he’s facing widespread calls for his resignation from his own party after vast troves of evidence have surfaced alleging that he had an affair with a married staffer, Regina Ann Santos-Aviles. That staffer would eventually die via suicide in September in shockingly gruesome fashion, after she reportedly doused herself with gasoline and set herself on fire in her own backyard. Utterly horrifying.

Regina Ann Santos-Aviles, the mother to an 8-year-old son, reportedly began a sexual affair with Rep. Tony Gonzales sometime in mid-2024, while Gonzales was in the midst of a grueling primary against far-right influencer Brandon Herrera, ultimately eking out an extremely narrow victory by a margin of only 324 votes. Troves of text messages published by the San Antonio Express-News show that late at night in May of 2024, Gonzales texted Santos-Aviles, instructing her to “send me a sexy pic,” later absurdly insisting that she do it because “I’m just such a visual person.” She attempts to beg off from the request, but he’s insistent, consistently steering the conversation back to sex and grilling her for sexual information and turn-ons despite Santos-Aviles sending messages like “This is going too far boss.” Nevertheless, the messages show the pair agreeing to meet up days later when Gonzales was planning to campaign in the Uvalde area, with the congressman promising that “it will be lots of fun,” and that they should arrive at their meeting place “at check-in time.”

“‘Send me a sexy pic,’ Rep. Tony Gonzales texted Regina Ann Santos-Aviles, then director of his regional district office in Uvalde.

Santos-Aviles replied that she’d had a rough week and ‘you don’t really want a hot picture of me.’

‘Yes I do,’ Gonzales texted, adding, ‘Hurry.'”

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) Feb 23, 2026 at 12:59 PM

The alleged affair is supported not only by Regina Santos-Aviles’ text messages, provided to the San Antonio Express-News by her husband Adrian Aviles (more on him shortly), but also by statements from other former staffers of Gonzales’ district office who spoke to the paper. An unnamed staffer told the paper that Santos-Aviles disclosed the affair to them in 2024, and that she had subsequently fallen into depression after her husband discovered the affair and the Gonzales office responded by ostracizing and “black sheeping” her, although she wasn’t actually relieved of her employment. That former staffer likewise shared a text message with the San Antonio Express-News from Santos-Aviles in which she said she’d had an “affair with our boss.” The staffer even claims he attempted to warn Gonzales’ district office months before Santos-Aviles’ death of her deteriorating mental health. It should likely go without saying that U.S. House of Representatives ethics rules bar lawmakers from sexual relationships with their staff members, for exactly these sorts of reasons.

Despite the mountains of evidence, and particularly all of his own text messages, Rep. Tony Gonzales has simply continued to deny that the affair ever happened, while continuing to run for reelection (against the same primary opponent, gun manufacturer Brandon Herrera) in a primary that is now less than a week away. He has shot down calls for him to resign from his own party, claiming to the media this week “there will be an opportunity for all the details and facts to come out. What you’ve seen is not all the facts, and there will be ample time for all of that to come out.” Curiously, he hasn’t yet mentioned when all of those facts are supposed to “come out,” exactly.

Gonzales has also claimed that he is being blackmailed by none other than Santos-Aviles’ husband, Adrian Aviles. Online, he shared partial screenshots of communications from Aviles’ attorney, in which they appear to imply the desire for payment in exchange for Aviles’ silence. Gonzales chose to blow up any potential agreement there by posting the exchanges online. Aviles’ lawyer, Robert “Bobby” Barrera of San Antonio, more or less acknowledged that they were indeed trying to negotiate a “confidential settlement” with the congressman in response to Regina Santos-Aviles’ death, which feels distinctly gross.

“This is clearly a last act of a desperate man who is going to do anything but admit what he did,” Barrera said to the Express-News. He claimed the letter “clearly shows we did not want to go public, and we weren’t attempting to damage his career.”

So this insane story just gets crazier.

GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales accuses the lawyer of his dead lover’s husband of blackmail, only for the husband to respond to him on Twitter.

“You may avoid responsibility here on earth, but one day you will answer to a higher authority.”

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— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona.bsky.social) Feb 19, 2026 at 1:39 PM

Which brings us to surviving husband Adrian Aviles, the owner of an Uvalde security and audio-visual systems company. He has said that he shared the text communications from Santos-Aviles’ phone with the media because he “couldn’t bear to sit by” while Gonzales continued to “lie on my wife’s name,” but Aviles seemed quite content to “sit by” while his lawyer was attempting to negotiate a settlement out of Gonzales. It seems to be only after that route to a payday was exhausted that Aviles was suddenly compelled to bring the case to the court of public opinion. He now says he wants “accountability” for the fact that Gonzales “abused his power,” and has continued to criticize the Congressman for pushing “family values and Christian morals … denying the fact that he’s ruined somebody’s life.”

And yet, plenty of information that has emerged in the case also doesn’t paint Adrian Aviles as husband in the best of light. He speaks of having wanted to reconcile with his wife, and yet also acknowledges that he chose to move out of their home because “I needed my space.” He fought against the release of the police report connected to Regina Santos-Aviles’ death, saying that he wanted to spare their young son from being exposed to the information in it, but when that report was released it contained statements from the police who responded to the scene, who stated that Santos-Aviles herself (no doubt in severe pain) told the officer that she had learned that Adrian Aviles was “having an affair with her best friend,” which allegedly contributed to her suicide. It’s unclear when this other alleged affair would have taken place, but it was supported by another acquaintance of Santos-Aviles, who told police investigators that she had texted him, “accusing her husband of sleeping with her best friend.”

Which is all to say: Good god, this poor woman was absolutely put through the wringer, clearly facing intense emotional pressure from all sides. Even now, her image has been roped into the ongoing Republican primary in Texas, as the far-right campaign of Brandon Herrera has hammered Gonzales on the affair and the death in its brutal ads, while boasting that Herrera is “the pro-Trump Republican who can keep this seat,” amid worries that all the negative publicity could drive Democratic turnout and voters in the 2026 midterm elections in November. Just look at these ads.

Indeed, Rep. Tony Gonzales has managed to fuck up to such a degree that he’s now earned the condemnation of quite a few members of his own party and fellow members of Congress, a level of disdain typically reserved for prolific crooks on the level of George Santos. The likes of Thomas Massie (KY), Lauren Boebert (CO) Anna Paulina Luna (FL), Nancy Mace (SC), Brandon Gill (TX) and Chip Roy (TX) have all called for Gonzales’ resignation, with Gill saying that “America deserves better,” and that “Tony should drop out of the race.” Donald Trump, for the record, endorsed Rep. Gonzales for reelection back in December. Mace, the same woman who reportedly made staff upvote Reddit posts about her being the “hottest woman in Congress,” even announced that she was introducing a resolution that would force the House ethics committee to publicly release its reports about allegations of sexual harassment made against members of Congress.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, meanwhile, has predictably fallen short of asking for the resignation of Gonzales, no doubt concerned with trying to preserve the narrow GOP advantage in the House for as long as possible. He instead babbled about needing to let “the investigation play out and all the facts to come out” in statements to the media, saying that “If the accusation of something like this is going to be the litmus for someone being able to continue to serve in the House, a lot of people would have to resign or be removed or expelled from Congress.” Can someone please tell the man who is third in line to the Presidency that admitting that “a lot of people” in the House have accusations against them is not a good thing?

The most undeniable point here was likely spoken by Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, who rightfully called on all Texas lawmakers to effectively banish Rep. Gonzales from their ranks.

“The entire Texas delegation, as well as every single other Member of Congress, should be condemning a sitting Member of Congress asking for explicit photos of their staff,” Luna said. “As a woman, this is really disgusting to see. Not to mention, it brings dishonor on the House of Representatives.”