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Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, R-Mich., has resigned his seat in the House of Representatives, capping a bizarre couple of months that had already ended his congressional career.

"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 said in a statement Friday evening. "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."

In May, McCotter failed to qualify for the Republican primary ballot for reelection after his campaign delivered a collection of mostly invalid petition signatures to the Michigan Secretary of State's office. That triggered an investigation into possible fraud by the state attorney general, and McCotter decided not to seek the seat as a write-in candidate. More recently, he gave an unusual interview to the Detroit News in which he gave details on a television pilot he was writing.

McCotter, first elected in 2002, was in the middle of his fifth term in Congress.