Rep. Tim Murphy (PA-18), one the most anti-choice Republicans of them all, had an extramarital affair and apparently urged his mistress to get an abortion after she told him she might be pregnant. The Post-Gazette in Pittsburgh got their hands on the text message exchange, where Murphy apologizes for his hypocritical public stances on abortion:
“And you have 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,” Shannon Edwards, a forensic psychologist in Pittsburgh with whom the congressman admitted last month to having a relationship, wrote to Mr. Murphy on Jan. 25, in the midst of an unfounded pregnancy scare.
A text from Mr. Murphy’s cell phone number that same day in response says, “I get what you say about my March for life messages. I’ve never written them. Staff does them. I read them and winced. I told staff don’t write any more. I will.”
The congressman has been lauded by the Family Research Council, for his stance on abortion, as well as for family values, generally. He also has been endorsed by LifePAC, which opposes abortion rights, and is a member of the House Pro-Life Caucus, an affiliation that is often cited by his office.
Another day, another hypocritical, ‘family values’ Republican who can’t live up to his own moral code.
That isn’t the only bombshell in the Post-Gazette’s rundown of Rep. Murphy’s bad conduct. His chief of staff, Susan Mosychuk, fired off an incredible 6-page memo (you can read it in full here) detailing how horrible his behavior is to his staff, which has seen 100% turnover.
There has been an ongoing and ever more pronounced pattern of sustained inappropriate behavior and engagement from the Congressman to and with staff impacting office operations in many ways: inability to hire and retain competent staff, overwhelming amount of redundant work products which you constantly reject, to name just a few. I have both witnessed and been exposed to hostile, erratic, unstable, angry, aggressive and abusive behavior from the Congressman.
She also detailed his abusive behavior during a visit to his home district in June:
“You were storming around as we walked in, and as we sat down for prep — having just arrived literally moments ago — you started in on the [legislative director] and verbally abused him, harassed him, chastised him and criticized all his work products. You called many of the work products that he literally gave up his weekend to produce as ‘useless.’ You pushed other documents off the table onto the floor because they weren’t what you wanted. Then you got angry and demanded we find the documents that you had just thrown on the ground.”
The memo also referenced a town hall meeting Mr. Murphy held on June 5 and said that Mr. Murphy drove the car with staff to events later that day. As he drove in a torrential downpour, the memo says, his driving was “dangerous and erratic,” while he read his iPad, played YouTube videos and texted.