It was just past midnight on 9 May 2024 when Rep Tony Gonzales allegedly sent the first message. 'Send me a sexy pic,' the Texas Republican wrote to Regina Santos-Aviles, one of his congressional staffers. She pushed back. 'This is going too far boss,' she replied. He kept going. The exchange that followed—graphic, persistent, and now forensically recovered from Santos-Aviles' phone—may represent the most damaging political scandal of Gonzales' career, arriving just days before a Republican primary that was already shaping up to be the fight of his political life.
Santos-Aviles, who served as regional director of Gonzales' Uvalde office, died by suicide on 14 September 2025, at the age of 35. She was the mother of an eight-year-old boy. Her widower, Adrian Aviles, released the texts, saying that he wants the world to know what kind of man the congressman really is.
