A timeline of an extramarital affair, office chaos, and resignation
Somebody hand a Jimmy to Congressman Timmy. Condoms help prevent and reduce the risks STI’s, unwanted pregnancies and politics embarrassments. Congrats on becoming the Hypocrite of the Week!
Tim Murphy, a Pennsylvania Republican who on Thursday announced he would resign from his House seat this month after The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published texts revealing that when Mr. Murphy’s mistress thought she was pregnant, he urged her to consider an abortion. Two days before, Mr. Murphy had voted for a bill that would ban abortion after 20 weeks on the medically dubious grounds that, at that age, a fetus can experience pain. The congressman, elected in 2002, has been praised by the Family Research Council for his stance on abortion and has been endorsed by LifePAC, which opposes abortion rights. He is also a member of the House Pro-Life Caucus, an affiliation often cited by his office.
In early September 2017, Murphy, 64, admitted to an extramarital affair with Shannon Edwards, a 32-year-old forensic psychologist. The affair came to light in the course of Edwards’ divorce proceedings. On October 3, 2017, Murphy’s hometown newspaper, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that a January 5, 2017, text message from Edwards to Murphy included the statement, “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” in the midst of an unfounded pregnancy scare. In the same article, the Post-Gazette published a June 8, 2017 memorandum from Murphy’s chief of staff to Murphy complaining of the congressman’s repeated harassment of staff and his “hostile, erratic, unstable, angry, aggressive and abusive behavior” which led to an “inability to hire and retain competent staff, abysmal office morale”. The memo also accused Murphy of dangerous distracted driving during a heavy thunderstorm with staff members in his car.
On October 5, 2017, after allegations arose that Murphy had encouraged his girlfriend to terminate a pregnancy despite holding a strict anti-abortion stance, House Speaker Paul Ryan’s office announced that Murphy had tendered his resignation effective October 21. Murphy’s final decision to resign may have been due to pressure from Republican House leadership in regards to the abuse of staff and the potential for investigations by the House Ethics Committee over outside income paid by Murphy’s campaign to his Chief of Staff, Susan Mosychuk.
Not only is a Muphy a HUGE hypocrite when it comes to abortion, but he’s also a horrible boss. This is slightly ironic since he’s the co-author of The Angry Child: Regaining Control When Your Child Is Out of Control (2002) and Overcoming Passive-Aggression: How to Stop Hidden Anger from Spoiling Your Relationships, Career, and Happiness (2005). You would think he’d have a better grip on all of this better than the rest of us. He’s supposed to be the expected on not being an asshole. Oh, well. I guess he can always find Jesus again and the Republican voters in his district will forgive him and vote him back in 2020 while he doe some holy redemption tour on the TV circuit. I’d like to say his political is over but I’ll never underestimate the Republican party. Not only are their policies a horror show, they always come back from the dead like Jason Voorhees.
