Wyoming State Senator and U.S. House candidate Anthony Bouchard, who is running a primary challenge against incumbent Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), disclosed late Thursday that he impregnated a 14-year-old girl when he was 18 years old and living in Florida, according to The Casper Star-Tribune.
Bouchard came forward about the pregnancy in a Facebook Live video on Thursday — purportedly in an effort to get ahead of the story — but did not mention how old the girl was when the pregnancy happened. Bouchard did say, however, “she was a little younger than me so it’s like the Romeo and Juliet story.”
The two married when she was 15 years old, with permission from the girl’s mother, and were together for about three years before they divorced, Bouchard told the Star Tribune in an interview after the Facebook video was posted. Two years later, when his ex-wife was 20-years-old, she killed herself.
In the Facebook video, titled “Senator Bouchard Takes On The Fake News Media,” the state senator said his political opponents were going back “almost forty years” to dig up “something that happened in my youth.” The video focused, in part, on his and her unwillingness to go through with an abortion, and his decision to get married, which he said was “pretty scary” due to his age.
A spokesperson for Cheney’s office told Fox News her team had “absolutely no involvement” in digging into the pregnancy story. Bouchard told the Star Tribune later that he didn’t believe Cheney’s team was involved, reports the news agency, although he did tag Cheney in a Twitter post when he shared the video.
Investigators have been hounding my family for weeks and now the liberal fake news is coming out with a hit piece about my teenage years. This is why good people avoid running for office. I won’t back down, Swamp! @RepLizCheney Bring it! https://t.co/gaVSm6MkZM
— 🇺🇸Anthony Bouchard for Congress Against Cheney (@AnthonyBouchard) May 21, 2021
Bouchard said he raised the child, a boy, on his own after his ex-wife died, and was “proud to have made pro-life decisions when so young when faced with the pressures.” He also said that his son has since made “some wrong choices in his life.”
“He’s almost become my estranged son,” said Bouchard. “Some of the things that he’s got going on his life, I certainly don’t approve of them. But I’m not going to abandon him. I still love him. Just like when he was born.”
Bouchard said the divorce was “bitter,” but the two became friends afterward. He also said he didn’t understand why she took her own life but said that she entered another relationship after their divorce and that her dad had recently died, also by suicide.
He then turned his attention to the people he suggests were digging into his past, asking, “Can’t we let people rest in peace?”
“Quite frankly, is this the worst you got on me,” Bouchard asked in the Facebook video posted Thursday, later noting that he plans to stay in the race for the House of Representatives.
“It’s a damn shame that they’ll stop good people running for office, and I’m not going to let them do it to me. You bring it on — do as much as you want — because I’m no backing out of this race,” he added.
As The Daily Wire previously reported, Bouchard was the first lawmaker to file a primary challenge against Cheney following the impeachment vote. Others have since jumped in the race.