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Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Back issues
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GOP Rep. Tim Murphy to Resign After Reports of Affair

Republican Rep. Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania, caught in affair scandal, announced Thursday he will resign from Congress later this month.

(CN) — Republican Rep. Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania, caught in an affair scandal, announced Thursday he will resign from Congress later this month.

Murphy, a staunchly anti-abortion lawmaker, decided to quit after the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported this week that he urged his mistress to get an abortion when he thought she was pregnant.

The congressman originally announced Wednesday night that he would not seek re-election and that he would serve out the rest of his term through 2018.

But he will now resign from the House effective Oct. 21.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story included text messages between Murphy and Shannon Edwards.

A Jan. 25 text message from Edwards told the congressman he had "zero issue posting your pro-life stance all over the place when you had no issue asking me to abort our unborn child just last week when we thought that was one of the options," according to the newspaper.

A text message from Murphy's number in response said his staff was responsible for his anti-abortion messages: "I've never written them. Staff does them. I read them and winced. I told staff don't write any more."

Edwards, it turned out, wasn't pregnant. Murphy recently acknowledged his affair with Edwards, which became public as a result of her divorce proceedings.

The Post-Gazette also published a six-page memo apparently written by Murphy's congressional chief of staff and dated June 8, in which she accused Murphy of subjecting his staff members to "threats, hostility, anger and harassment."

Categories / Government, National, Politics

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