The bipartisan House Ethics Committee on Monday recommended that Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-NC) be censured for his behavior towards two young women on his staff.
As documented in a report and accompanying appendix, Edwards lavished the staffers with gifts including “guns,” sent romantic text messages and relentlessly sought to spend time alone with them. Edwards has been in the House since 2023, and is married. The committee emphasized that it found no evidence that Edwards committed sexual assault or explicitly propositioned the women for sex.
Edwards failed “to adhere to the spirit of rules prohibiting sexual harassment of and unwanted advances to House staffers,” it said, adding: “As part of its investigation, the Committee sought documentary evidence from multiple sources, including Representative Edwards, conducted 16 witness interviews, including of Representative Edwards, and reviewed nearly 1,500 pages of documentary evidence.”
In a 15-page rebuttal, counsel for Edwards wrote that “the Committee has failed to demonstrate that either of the two staffers expressed discomfort to Representative Edwards regarding his conduct with them.” The lawyers added that Edwards believed the staffers’ discomfort stemmed from rumors that he was having an affair with one of them. It contended that Edwards’ fellow lawmakers unfairly recommended censure after finding he violated the “spirit of the Rules of the House,” but that he did not commit a “direct violation of House rules addressing sexual misconduct.”
The committee wrote that the investigation began after it put out a call for information about members’ sexual misconduct.
Per the report, Edwards brought the two staffers with him from his state Senate office upon his election in 2022. He made one of them his full-time scheduler, even though she was still in college.
“The former Chief of Staff opposed this arrangement, but Representative Edwards was ‘insistent,’” the report said.
In the roughly three years the two women worked for Edwards, he was fixated on them, according to the report.
“Both women received numerous gifts from Representative Edwards, including jewelry totaling over $1,000, designer purses, guns, shoes, flowers, a laptop and cell phone, KitchenAid mixer, robotic vacuum, vacations, tickets to performances, and one-on-one dinners,” the report said, adding that “Staffer 1 said she did not feel obligated to wear the purse or jewelry Representative Edwards gave her, but Staffer 2 felt ‘obligated to wear’ a necklace he bought her and when she stopped wearing it, ‘he made a comment about . . . how disappointed he is that I’m not willing to [] wear what he got me.’”
An unsettling recurring theme in the report was Edwards’ efforts to hide his interactions with the women from his other staffers, despite his insistence that his relationship with them was platonic and professional.
He “brought Staffer 1 to a holiday event at the White House, hid the details from other staffers, bought her flowers, and texted her in advance that he was ‘so excited about tonight’ and wanted the evening to be ‘perfect,’” the report said. “Staffer 1 testified that Representative Edwards attempted to pressure her to continue the evening with him after the event and insisted on having her travel to and from the event in his car, with his driver.”
The committee detailed episodes in which he routinely ignored the women’s attempts to set boundaries with him, already a difficult task given his status and influence over their careers.
“When Representative Edwards messaged Staffer 1 to ask her preferred flowers, she responded ‘I’m okay without flowers thank you though!’” the report said. “He got her flowers anyway.”
In another instance, one of the staffers said that his sending of “approximately 30” different flavored ice creams to her house was a “bit excessive.”
A senior staffer confronted Edwards on the women’s behalf as early as May 2025, per the report, but the congressman “got very angry” and accused her of not understanding their “unique relationship.”
The report documented a seeming indifference to the discomfort he caused the two staffers, and his broader office.
He “wrote poems for Staffer 2, including one that he read at her going away party in the congressional office accompanied by a slideshow, during which he cried,” the report said. “Several staffers present testified that they felt uncomfortable, and Representative Edwards acknowledged in his own testimony that he could tell the staff felt uncomfortable.”
The committee found that, despite his protestations that his relationships with the two women were aboveboard, Edwards appeared to have deleted texts from his conversations with them.
The harassment isolated the two staffers and engendered bad feelings towards them when he showed preferential treatment, including promoting one of the women, still in the early years of her career, to deputy chief of staff in 2024 over a much more experienced staffer. Both women have left both Edwards’ office and the House of Representatives.
The House is on recess until September, likely pushing a censure vote until then.
Edwards is currently in a tight reelection fight with Democrat and livestock farmer Jamie Ager. Cook Political Report downgraded his race from “likely Republican” to “leans Republican” in June, saying that “even before stories broke alleging Rep. Chuck Edwards had pursued an affair with a staffer,” his reelect was in danger according to “neck-and-neck” polling from both parties.
