Edwards defends interactions with female staff as affectionate, not harassment

Ethics panel documented poems, missed votes, and spa bookings

Rep. Chuck Edwards, a North Carolina Republican, issued a 22-page letter dated Aug. 25 defending his interactions with two young female staff members as affectionate but never romantic or sexual, days after the House Ethics Committee recommended he be censured. Edwards dropped his re-election bid after the panel’s report was released earlier this month.

In the letter, addressed to House colleagues and earlier reported by NOTUS, Edwards wrote: “Poetry is not sexual misconduct. Socializing with a colleague is not sexual misconduct. Caring deeply about someone with whom you have worked and come to know for years is not sexual misconduct.” He accused the panel of making an “extraordinary leap” in characterizing his behavior as sexual harassment.

The ethics committee’s report, released earlier this month, found “substantial reason” to believe that Edwards “engaged in persistent unprofessional and inappropriate conduct” toward the two women working in his congressional office. One woman was 19 years old and still in college when she was hired, the panel said, and the other was in her early 20s.

According to the report, Edwards missed House votes to decorate the Christmas tree of a staffer in her early 20s, booked and paid for her massages and spa treatments, and wrote poems for her that he read through tears at her going-away party. He also arranged for a singer to serenade the same staffer with an Ed Sheeran song on her birthday. Afterward, the staffer told a friend she believed Edwards did not view her as “just a daughter figure” and said she was “scared lowkey,” according to the committee report.

In May 2025, a senior staff member approached Edwards on behalf of the two young women, prompting him to angrily tell her she did not understand the “unique relationship” he had with them, the report found. Both staffers later left Edwards’s office, though they gave him a different explanation for their departures.

Edwards told committee investigators his behavior did not constitute sexual harassment because he avoided inappropriate sexual touching and explicitly sexual comments, and sometimes told the young women they were free to put up boundaries with him.

The Edwards case is one of several sexual misconduct matters involving House members this year. Earlier in 2026, former Rep. Eric Swalwell (D., Calif.) left Congress and his California gubernatorial campaign after multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct, harassment, and assault; he has denied wrongdoing. In April, Rep. Tony Gonzales (R., Texas) said he would retire after admitting to an affair with a staff member who later died by suicide from self-immolation. Last week, Rep. Cory Mills (R., Fla.) lost a primary after facing allegations ranging from domestic abuse and revenge porn to improper business dealings; he has denied wrongdoing.

The ethics committee is also investigating allegations that Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D., Calif.) engaged in sexual misconduct, including “inappropriate sexual contact with a House staffer.” Gomez said he “made personal mistakes outside my marriage” but called his actions consensual and said they did not violate ethics rules. Leaders of the House Democratic Women’s Caucus have pushed the committee to release its Gomez report before a 60-day communications blackout takes effect next month ahead of the midterm elections.