NY Democratic Rep. Eric Massa will resign from Congress on Monday, only days after reports first surfaced that the freshman New York lawmaker was under investigation by the House ethics committee for allegedly harassing a male staffer.

Massa was preparing the news in the Corning Leader, his local newspaper, but several media outlets were already reporting the news Friday afternoon.

In a statement released Friday, Massa directly addressed the ethics issue for the first time, acknowledging that he used language that might have made staffers uncomfortable. But he did not specifically address any specific harassment allegations.

Massa, who was elected in November 2008, announced earlier in the week that he would not be seeking a second term following a cancer scare in December. He initially dismissed as “unsubstantiated” a POLITICO report that he was being scrutinized for improper advances to a junior aide in his office. In fact, he mentioned this report in his resignation statement Friday afternoon.

“At no point prior to this had any member of the Ethics Committee communicated with me directly – if fact I first read it on the internet,” Massa said.

Massa’s resignation is another blow to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other top Democratic leaders.

However, Rep. Charlie Rangel, the longtime Democratic lawmaker from Harlem, was forced out of his post as chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee earlier this week following a public “admonishment” by the ethics committee for taking corporate-funded trips to the Caribbean in 2007 and 2008.

And two other Democrats lawmakers – Reps. Maxine Waters (Calif.) and Laura Richardson (Calif.) – remain under investigation as well.

(Read more: http://www.politico.com/)