Rep. Thaddeus McCotter Resigns After 'Nightmarish' Month
Rep. Thaddeus McCotter has apparently reached his breaking point. The Michigan Republican announced Friday evening that he is resigning from Congress after a string of "calumnies, indignities and deceits."
In the past year McCotter failed at running for president, failed to collect enough petition signatures to get on the ballot for his re-election and, to add insult to injury, stirred up controversy this week after a racy TV pilot he wrote was leaked to the press by a former staffer.
"After nearly 26 years in elected office, this past nightmarish month and a half have, for the first time, severed the necessary harmony between the needs of my constituency and of my family," McCotter wrote in a statement that was as unique as the representative that wrote it. "As this harmony is required to serve, its absence requires I leave."
Here is the full statement:
LIVONIA, MI - Today, U.S. Representative Thaddeus McCotter made the following statement:
"Today I have resigned from the office of United States Representative for Michigan's 11th Congressional District.
After nearly 26 years in elected office, this past nightmarish month and a half have, for the first time, severed the necessary harmony between the needs of my constituency and of my family. As this harmony is required to serve, its absence requires I leave.
The recent event's totality of calumnies, indignities and deceits have weighed most heavily upon my family. Thus, acutely aware one cannot rebuild their hearth of home amongst the ruins of their U.S. House office, for the sake of my loved ones I must "strike another match, go start anew" by embracing the promotion back from public servant to sovereign citizen.
I do not leave for an existing job and face diminishing prospects (and am both unwilling and ill-suited to lobby), my priorities are twofold: find gainful employment to help provide for my family; and continue to assist, in any way they see fit, the Michigan Attorney General's earnest and thorough investigation, which I requested, into the 2012 petition filing.
While our family takes this step into the rest of our lives, we do so with the ultimate confidence in our country's future. True, as at other times in the life of our nation, we live in an Age of Extremes that prizes intensity over sanity; rhetoric over reality; and destruction over creation. But this too shall pass, thanks to the infinite, inspired wisdom of the sovereign people who, with God's continued blessings, will again affirm for the generations American Exceptionalism.
Truly, it is a challenging and fortunate time to live in our blessed sanctuary of liberty.
In closing, to The People of Michigan's 11th Congressional District, I can but say this: Thank you for the privilege of having worked for you."
~ Thaddeus G. McCotter