Within 24 hours, Tim Murphy went from playing out the string on his political career to resigning within two weeks. It may have looked like he decided that he probably needed to put his marriage back together a lot sooner than later after it emerged that he tried to get his mistress to have an abortion—despite being one of the most rabid forced-birthers in the House.
But as it turns out, Murphy is on the way out for something a lot more fundamental than talking out of both sides of his mouth. It turns out that in the midst of the fallout surrounding his affair with a woman young enough to be his daughter, word got out that his congressional office was one of the most toxic environments in Washington.
As it turns out, Murphy’s downfall can be traced to an item buried in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s explosive story about his mistress, Shannon Edwards, calling him out for acting like a chest-beating forced-birther so soon after suggesting she end her own pregnancy. The Post-Gazette had also gotten its hands on a breathtaking memo Murphy received from his chief of staff, Susan Mosychuk, in June. It warned Murphy in no uncertain terms that unless there was “a complete cessation” of a longstanding pattern of abusive and bullying behavior, she was going to have to “pursue further steps of recourse.”
For example, Mosychuk cited an incident earlier in June in which Murphy viciously berated his new legislative director and other staffers before a town hall meeting in the district, then couldn’t keep his eyes off his phone and iPad despite driving in a “torrential downpour.”
Mosychuk claimed this pattern of behavior has caused over 100 staffers to leave during Murphy’s 14-plus years in Congress, with nearly 100 percent staff turnover in the last year alone.
In the hours after Murphy resigned, a number of his former staffers came forward with their own horror stories. Many of them claimed that Mosychuk, who began as Murphy’s legislative director in 2003 before becoming chief of staff in 2004, was every bit as abusive as Murphy. For instance, she reportedly used white noise machines to keep constituents from hearing her cuss out staffers. Some of them have needed years of therapy to recover from the ordeal.
By Thursday, so many reports about the environment in Murphy’s office had come in that Republican leaders believed the House Ethics Committee would be all but forced to investigate. Rather than risk that distraction, they called Murphy in and told him to leave immediately.
Now this is where you should get outraged. It turns out that the toxic environment in Murphy’s office had been an open secret on Capitol Hill for some time. Many lawmakers and aides were aware of it, and expressed sympathy for Murphy’s staffers. However, Murphy’s staffers feared that if they reported it, it would somehow get back to Murphy and Mosychuk.
This is not acceptable. No one should have to fear retaliation for coming forward about an abusive environment—and especially in the people’s house. Hopefully the leaderships of both parties can sit down and find out how this got so far out of hand—and also ensure that this never happens again.