Holy fuck. The Daily Mail reports that “moderate” Texas Republican Congressman Tony Gonzales had an affair with an aide who ended it by fatally setting herself on fire at home last month.

Regina Aviles, 35, joined Gonzales’s staff in 2021 and at some point since separated from her husband after she began effing the 43 year-old married congressman and father of six. Why the mother-of-one doused herself with gasoline and lit a match in the backyard of her home in Uvalde on September 13th is not known, just that it was caught on a home security cam and that Gonzales did not attend her funeral on the 25th. A spokesperson did not deny the affair to the Mail.

The Uvalde Police Department – not exactly an examplar of bravery in law enforcement – blocked the release of public records related to Aviles’s death, even though in Texas records are routinely made public no matter what stage an investigation is at. Cops have withheld the 911 call, video evidence, and police reports while they’ve petitioned Picasso-face Ken Paxton to keep the files sealed. Adding to the mess is that Uvalde PD Chief Homer Delgado disowned an endorsement of Gonzales that the congressman’s staff had tweeted and later deleted on request of the chief.

Gonzales has canceled a shit ton of public events since Aviles’s death. Some, present company included, had for a while considered the congressman to be among the least bad of a pretty fucking bad caucus full of the criminally insane and morally debased. Now while there’s no evidence just yet to suggest that Gonzales had driven Aviles to set herself on fire, the void of information and the shadiness around her death does nothing but invite a shit ton of speculation to that effect.

If that’s the case, then yeah, Tony Gonzales is worse than Cory Mills, as incredible as that sounds.