Edwards appeals to colleagues in a letter before censure vote

On August 25, US Rep. Chuck Edwards, R-NC11, sent a letter to his colleagues defending himself against a recent report from the House Ethics Committee, which found that he had violated the House Official Code of Conduct prohibiting sexual harassment.  In the letter, Edwards makes a plea to his colleagues before they vote on his censure.

Edwards asserts that the committee took an “extraordinary analytical leap” from the evidence to the conclusion. 

“The Committee concluded that I neither engaged in sexual activity with nor explicitly propositioned any individual staff member,” according to the letter. “The Committee concluded that the allegations in this matter do not implicate quid pro quo sexual harassment. And the Committee concluded that I did not violate federal sexual harassment law. Those are not my characterizations of the evidence. Those are the Committee’s own conclusions.”

Edwards continues to assert that there is a great distance between the evidence presented and the conclusion the Committee came to, inferring that the committee went well beyond the scope of the evidence to conclude sexual harassment. 

“An affectionate friendship is not a sexual proposition,” wrote Edwards. “A gift is not sexual misconduct. A compliment is not sexual misconduct. 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.”

“Yet individual acts that were not themselves prohibited were gathered together, assigned the most damaging possible interpretation, and then used collectively to support a conclusion far more serious than the underlying evidence,” wrote Edwards.

He goes on to insist that House rules do not explicitly prohibit many of the activities included in the report. 

“There is no House rule prohibiting Members and staff from being friends,” according to the report. “There is no House rule prohibiting Members and staff from spending social time together. There is no House rule prohibiting a Member from genuinely and deeply caring about people with whom he has worked closely for years. And House gift rules recognize circumstances in which gifts between established friends are permissible.”

Edwards goes on to imply that the evidence collected by the committee, including 186,000 emails, voice messages, texts, and documents, was selectively picked and assembled. 

“…Members should ask how the communications quoted in the report were selected and on what basis they can fairly be characterized as representative.”

Edwards strongly pushes back, particularly in the area of gift giving, asserting that some gifts were “job-related tools” and that some gifts predated the women’s employment for him, also asserting that he gave gifts to both male and female staffers and even gave an example of when he gave a handgun to a male staffer. 

“I testified that one of the women frequently referred to me as her ‘second dad,’” wrote Edwards. “I know the Committee received testimony from another witness who had worked closely with us for years and viewed another of these relationships as a father/daughter and mentor/mentee relationship. The report itself recounts a third-party reference to one staffer as ‘just a daughter figure.’”

Edwards asserts that the evidence in the report from the committee does not read as a one-sided romance, of one person relentlessly pursuing badgering another who shows no interest, and gives many examples of the staffer in question. 

Text messages included in the ethics report do indicate that the staffer made statements such as: “I’ll have a great time either way bc we get to hang out!” or “I’m excited you’re coming too! It’s going to be so fun!” 

However, Edwards fails to include examples such as a text message where he offers to get the staffer a corsage, and she declines, or another instance where the staffer thanked Edwards for the flowers he had sent her on their trip to Vegas together, but stated the message made her uncomfortable.

“Just want to make sure this trip isn’t meant to be anything it’s not?” said the staffer. 

Edwards apologized for making her uncomfortable but insisted that nothing was meant by it and that it was “a cute play on the name of the arrangement.” 

Text messages also indicate that on June 14 of 2024, Edwards had a large amount of ice cream delivered to her residence. She responded by saying, “Thank you, but this seems a bit excessive. 

“Before accepting the Committee’s conclusion, I respectfully ask you to examine the evidence, the omissions, the disputed facts, and, above all, the enormous distance between what the Committee actually found and the label it ultimately imposed,”  concluded Edwards. “Possibility is not proof. Inference is not evidence. And selective context is not totality. A finding this serious should rest on evidence equally serious. This one does not.”

Edwards also includes a list of “15 Questions Members Should Ask  Before Accepting the Ethics Report.”

On Aug. 4 at 3:32 am, Edwards announced in an X post that he would not be seeking re-election in the upcoming November midterms. 

In his place, state Rep. Jennifer Balkcom, R-Henderson, has been tapped by Republicans as the GOP nominee to run in the 11th Congressional District against Democrat Jamie Ager.   

On Aug. 17, President Donald Trump recently endorsed Balkcom in a Truth Social post. 

“Edwards appeals to colleagues in a letter before censure vote” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.