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| “ | You've heard those stories before. She was a little younger than me, so it's like the Romeo and Juliet story. | „ |
| ~ Bouchard's controversial statement about his sex scandal. |
Anthony Bouchard is a real estate developer and US state senator in the Wyoming Senate who admitted in May 2021 to impregnating an underage girl when he was 18.
Political career
Before getting elected to the Wyoming Senate, Bouchard was a lobbyist for the group Wyoming Gun Owners. During his career, he led efforts for Wyoming to fight the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which ultimately passed in 2010.
After Republican senator Wayne Johnson retired in 2016, Bouchard announced his candidacy for the empty seat. He narrowly won the Republican primary before successfully getting elected with 52% of the vote in 2017. One of his first major actions in the senate was to support a bill to allow people to carry guns into government meetings; this bill was vetoed by the Republican governor Matt Mead. Bouchard also voted against plans to expand Medicaid and get more people health insurance.
In March 2018, Bouchard introduced a bill to the Wyoming Senate to allow a person to use deadly force in order to protect himself or herself without first running away. This bill would also allow homeowners to shoot burglars without any fear of jail time because it would be assumed they acted in self-defence. This bill successfully passed into law, leading to the acquittal of a man named Jason Johns who shot an alleged burglar as he ran into Johns' home.
In January 2021, Wyoming congresswoman Liz Cheney voted in favour of impeaching then-president Donald Trump for inciting the 2021 United States Capitol storming. Bouchard subsequently announced his intention to oppose her in the 2022 Republican primary in order to remove her from her seat. To that end, he voted in favour of a bill that would have forced Cheney to get 51% of votes or more in the primary to win; the bill was rejected by a close vote. While the Republicans were successful in ousting Cheney, Bouchard failed to win the seat.
Sex scandal
In May 2021, during his campaign to defeat Cheney, Bouchard posted a Facebook Live video in which he admitted to impregnating a girl "a little younger than" him when he was 18. He claimed that the event happened over forty years previously when he lived in Florida. In an interview with the Casper Star-Tribune, Bouchard revealed that the girl was 14 years old and trivialised the event by saying it was "like the Romeo and Juliet story". Under the laws in Florida at the time, which had lax prohibitions on child marriage, Bouchard was able to marry her when she turned 15. The girl later gave birth to a son. The couple divorced after three years and she committed suicide at age 20.
Due to the statute of limitations on sexual abuse, Bouchard was not charged over this confession. However, it is likely that it will hurt his election prospects.