The House Ethics Committee concluded in a damning report on Monday that there was “substantial reason to believe” that Representative Chuck Edwards, Republican of North Carolina, “violated House rules related to sexual harassment and hostile workplaces.” Specifically, the report found that Mr. Edwards “engaged in persistent unprofessional and inappropriate conduct towards two young female staffers.”
The committee recommended that Mr. Edwards be censured by the House. According to the report, Mr. Edwards was interviewed by the committee and said that he had not done anything inappropriate. A spokeswoman for Mr. Edwards, 65, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The report, which did not name the women, found that they both received numerous gifts from Mr. Edwards, including jewelry totaling more than $1,000 in value, designer purses, guns, shoes, flowers, a laptop and a cellphone, a KitchenAid mixer, a robotic vacuum, vacations, tickets to performances and one-on-one dinners.
Axios previously reported that the congressman gave the two women matching handguns, one pink and the other blue. The attorney for one of the women said that she legally disposed of her handgun and later rebuffed her boss’s offer of other gifts.
The report described how Mr. Edwards would make flattering comments about the appearance of the two female staffers, calling them “pretty” or “breathtaking.” Axios also reported that Mr. Edwards wrote a handwritten note to one of the women after she resigned, saying that she had “written a complex chapter in my heart.”
The report found that Mr. Edwards also wrote her poems, did yardwork at her house, paid for her massages at a spa and skipped votes in the House so that he could help decorate her Christmas tree. When she told Mr. Edwards that she had received another job offer, he replied in a text: “I don’t cry often, but I have today. It caught me off guard.” The woman did not respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Edwards, who has been married since 1980, took one of the women to the December 2024 White House Christmas party. A copy of the official photograph obtained by The New York Times showed Mr. Edwards and the woman standing in between President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Jill Biden on their right, and Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, on their left.
In an interview, an attorney for the woman who attended the White House event said she did so without knowing that spouses or dates more typically attended as guests. The attorney added that his client received emails from the congressman that made her feel uncomfortable and felt that she was being groomed by him to be a romantic partner. The attorney, Elliot S. Berke, said the situation compelled the aide to resign earlier this year.
Though Mr. Edwards turned over several of his text messages and emails to the committee, the report notes that he did not furnish several relevant communications “that were central to the committee’s investigation.” Mr. Edwards responded to investigators that he often deleted messages “at a whim.”
Until recently, Mr. Edwards has cut an inconspicuous figure in Congress. He is a former operator of several McDonald’s restaurants in western North Carolina, as well as a three-term state senator. He won his congressional seat in 2022 after first defeating the scandal-ridden Republican incumbent congressman, Madison Cawthorn.
Like most of his House Republican colleagues, Mr. Edwards has assiduously praised President Trump, singling out the administration’s policies on trade, education and Iran. In 2023, he introduced legislation that would withhold federal funds from so-called sanctuary cities that impeded activities by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Mr. Edwards now faces political headwinds that are likely to be exacerbated by the ethics report. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has targeted his district, which the Cook Political Report recently moved from “likely Republican” to “lean Republican.”
His opponent, Jamie Ager, a farmer and self-described “mountain Democrat,” has raised over $3 million to date. Mr. Edwards has $940,000 in his campaign coffers.
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