Republican Lawmaker Finally Talks About Sexting With Catholic School Boy, Insists He’s Not Gay

“I shouldn’t have done it,” Republican Mike Yenni tells his local Fox 8 news station, “being a married man, being a father, and being an elected official.”

He is, of course, referring to the sext scandal involving himself and a Catholic school boy that made international headlines earlier this year.

40-year-old Yenni is the President of Jefferson Parish in Louisiana. Back in September, he was outed for sending some pretty racy text messages to a 17-year-old high school senior who he may or may not have meet at a school graduation function.

In the interview, Yenni starts by calling the sexting incident “a mistake” and “one of the stupidest decisions that I’ve ever made” but insists that it doesn’t define him.

“Everybody thinks, oh, something sexual happened. But there was no sex,” Yenni says. “That’s the clearest thing that I can possibly bring up, is that there was no sex. This is about inappropriate texting.”

Yenni goes on to say that the sexting, er, “inappropriate texting” only lasted for a short while, “probably less than two weeks,” before once again adding, “There was no sex.”

When asked about allegations that he supplied the teenager with sexy underwear, Yenni sidesteps the question by saying: “There are fictional elements to that story. … I’m not going to get into the line-by-line, I’m not going to debate it.”

(Our translation: Yes, he bought the boy sexy underwear.)

One thing Yenni is absolutely, 100 percent denying is that he met the teen at a high school function.

Related: Did Catholic School Where Mike Yenni Met Teen Boyfriend Know About His Lust For Underagers?

“I never saw him at any high school function, never spoke to him at a high school function, I don’t know where that came from,” he said. “All these innuendos that I’m banned from Jesuit High School–my wife and I were just there a couple of weeks ago at an event.”