We know the terrible details of how congressional staffer Regina Santos-Aviles, 35, died. She poured gasoline on herself and then flicked the flame on a lighter – a mad decision she instantly regretted. “Please send help. It hurts so bad,” she screamed at the 911 dispatcher. “Oh my God, I don’t want to die.” She tried to smother the flames by rolling on the ground of her backyard in Texas and crawling to a faucet to extinguish them with water.
But it was too late. A medical examiner found that the only part of her body not scorched by flames were the soles of her feet.
Thanks to a police report we know these terrible details of her death last year.
But we don’t know precisely why she was driven to such extreme action – and how much of a role in her death her boss Republican Congressman Tony Gonzales played. He has denied an affair but recently leaked texts reveal that he asked her to “send me a sexy pic,” and asked her “favorite position” before mentioning multiple sexual acts. Santos-Aviles replied “this is too far, Tony.”
It’s not that Congress doesn’t know if he exploited her – it’s that it won’t tell the American public. The Office of Congressional Conduct has completed a report into the matter but House rules bar it from handing its report to the House Ethics Committee so close to March 3 primaries in Texas in which Gonzales faces a serious challenge.
So while one branch of the government releases virtually every email Jeffrey Epstein ever sent – no matter the collateral damage to innocent people tangentially mentioned – another branch is knowingly keeping the darkest secrets of one of its members under lock and key ahead of an important election.
Relationships between members of Congress and their staff are prohibited.
If the House Oversight Committee can force the DoJ to release the Epstein files then surely Congress can force the release of the Gonzales files? How can voters in the Texas primary be expected to make an informed decision otherwise? But that’s precisely the point – Congress wants voters kept in the dark.
Elected representatives can’t honestly say they want transparency for victims of abuse if they are not prepared to turn the same level of scrutiny toward their own ranks.
On Monday, Lauren Boebert became the first congressional Republican to call on Gonzales to resign. Others soon followed including Nancy Mace who, as well as demanding that Gonzales resign, called out the system: “Inherently, the reason no one is ever held accountable in Congress, is because both parties protect the other.”
She added: “Tony Gonzales is just the tip of the iceberg. We won’t let the Washington establishment keep protecting its own. Congressional staff serve their country. They should never have to endure predatory behavior from the people they work for.”
Republican Anna Paulina Luna added her name to the calls. “Congressional ethics is a joke. They have so much dirt on members of Congress, and they do nothing. There is even a slush fund they use to pay people off with your tax dollars. This is part of why the system is so broken. They’re sitting on reports, and if someone steps out of line, isn’t it ironic how they leak them, threaten to leak them, or time it for right after Election Day?”
But Speaker Mike Johnson is in a bind. He can only afford to lose one vote in the House on party-line measures, and his margin would become even slimmer if Gonzales were to step down. Johnson has said the allegations are “very serious,” but that it is “too early for anybody to prejudge,” and argued lawmakers should allow the investigative process to play out.
It looks as if Johnson has backed the wrong horse. A recent survey found that Gonzales’s support had cratered: now he has just 21 percent support from likely voters in the March 3 Republican primary while his rival, YouTuber and firearms enthusiast Brandon Herrera, has 45 percent support. Herrera, who refers to himself as “the AK Guy,” narrowly lost to Gonzales by roughly 400 votes in a 2024 runoff. A recent ad from Herrera’s campaign warns the alleged affair “puts Republicans at risk of losing this seat and handing control of Congress to the Democrats.”
Without the Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s report, it has fallen to anonymous staffers, Santos-Aviles’s husband Adrian Aviles and the police to inform the public of the events leading up to her death.
A former staffer in Gonzales’s district office said Santos-Aviles had told him she had an affair with their boss and that she spiraled into a depression after her husband discovered the relationship and Gonzales cut her off. He also shared a screenshot of a text message from Santos-Aviles in which she acknowledged having an “affair with our boss.”
In the weeks after her death, Gonzales, a 45-year-old married father of six, denied the affair. But last week Santos-Aviles’s widower Adrian said that statement was false. Gonzales in return claimed that he was being “blackmailed” by Adrian. He posted an image on social media of a message purportedly from the family’s lawyer discussing a $300,000 settlement in exchange for his client signing a non-disclosure agreement. Gonzales wrote: “Disgusting to see people profit politically and financially off a tragic death.” Adrian responded: “We have never blackmailed anyone.”
The police report released this week details how Santos-Aviles told first responders that she set herself on fire because she had discovered that her estranged husband was romantically involved with her best friend.
Family and friends told police that Santos-Aviles had previously made self-harm threats and had been taking antidepressants. One friend said she had suffered from mental health issues since she was young.
The death of Regina Santos-Aviles shows exactly why rules exist banning members of Congress from having relationships with their staff. In reality, to protect them both. And it demonstrates why, when those rules are broken, the public has an absolute right to know.
Republicans on the House Oversight Committee played starring roles in fearlessly hunting down and publishing the Epstein files. Now it’s time they showed just as much gumption in forcing the release of the Gonzales files before the primary on March 3.
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