Quick quiz: what does it take to get censured by your own colleagues in Congress? Apparently, a poem, a puzzle, two engraved handguns, and thirty pints of ice cream.
The House Ethics Committee released its report Monday on Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-N.C.), and it reads less like a congressional document and more like a registry.
The panel found Edwards violated House rules on sexual harassment. Not "may have." Found. Bipartisan, unanimous, and now recommending censure, teed up for a full House vote whenever Congress remembers it has a job after Labor Day.
Here's the gift list, straight from the committee's own report:
"Numerous gifts from Representative Edwards, including jewelry totaling over $1,000, designer purses, guns, shoes, flowers, a laptop and cell phone, KitchenAid mixer, a robotic vacuum, vacations, tickets to performances, and one-on-one dinners."
A robotic vacuum. The guns were personalized, pink for one staffer, blue for the other, both engraved with their names.
Then there's the poem, read aloud, teary-eyed, at a staffer's going-away party while colleagues in the room told the committee they felt uncomfortable. The handwritten letter telling her she'd written "a complex chapter in my heart." The Adam Sandler puzzle mailed with a dinner invitation. The singer he hired to perform Ed Sheeran at her birthday, billed as "from a special someone." Thirty pints of ice cream. And Vegas, where he had flowers waiting in a former staffer's hotel room during the government shutdown and testified he kept the trip secret from his own scheduler because "rumors swirled around."
Edwards' lawyers say the committee cleared him of actual misconduct and that censure rests on vague standards, not a hard rule violation. Maybe. Try making that argument stick after the ice cream part. In May he called the allegations "horseshit" and told Axios he'd welcome an investigation.
He got one.
Now here's the part nobody in Raleigh wants to say out loud: Edwards isn't an anomaly, but a pattern in that area.
His seat is in the 11th District, the same as former Rep. Madison Cawthorn. The same Cawthorn who confirmed on the record that a video of himself naked and dry-humping another man in bed was real, and called its release a "blackmail" campaign. That was in addition to the unsubstantiated claim that fellow House Republicans were doing cocaine and inviting him to orgies, which he later admitted to Kevin McCarthy was exaggerated, and on top of getting stopped trying to board a commercial flight with a loaded handgun — twice.
Cawthorn only got his shot because Mark Meadows left for the Trump White House, kicking off a primary fight over his handpicked successor, Lynda Bennett, a Haywood County realtor and close friend of Meadows' wife, Debbie. Bennett had the machine and eventually Trump's own endorsement. She still lost to a 24-year-old nobody had heard of two months earlier, helped along by a mysterious "Never Trump" recording Meadows swore was doctored, though to trained ears used to the arguments and talking points of "Never Trumpers" who backed Ted Cruz in 2016, it sounded completely legit. Rumors on the ground in North Carolina back in 2020 also focused on an alleged unusual relationship between Meadows' wife and Bennett, rumors that have never been substantiated but also helped turn voters against her.
Run the tape: a seat emptied for a White House job, an unproven rumor that sank the machine candidate, a chaos agent who won anyway, and now a formal harassment finding against the guy who holds the seat today. Four Republican nominees, one western North Carolina district, six years.
It's worth remembering that when all of this played out – plus the Mark Robinson for North Carolina Governor campaign – current Senate candidate Michael Whatley was GOP Chairman in North Carolina.
He was also Chairman when the saga unfolded involving Harvey L. West, convicted of sex offenses involving two 14-year-old girls and one 16-year-old, who Whatley did nothing to ostracize from his role as an important fundraiser and event host for the party, despite plenty of intra-party criticism that continues to this day.
At some point, Whatley is going to have to address all this in a more direct and substantial way than he has to date, especially since we're hearing rumors that he's trailing Roy Cooper (blech) by three points in Edwards' district, which used to be Cawthorn's district, which was supposed to have been Bennett's district.
Maybe the state party can get some tips from Edwards on which brand of robotic hoover to buy to clean this mess up. The whole situation is looking about as sticky as thirty melted pints of ice cream.
Comments ()