Former congresswoman Katie Hill reveals pregnancy

Former US congresswoman Katie Hill has announced she is pregnant, just two years after she was forced to resign her seat amid an alleged sex scandal.

Ms Hill, who was a freshman in Congress when naked pictures of her emerged online in October 2019, resigned her seat and refuted claims she had an affair with a House staffer.

She has since run a Political Action Committee, called Her Time, for women entering and reentering office and despite only having one ovary, is expecting her first child.

She told Vanity Fair in an interview on Wednesday that it was a “miracle” that she was expecting and that the pregnancy was forcing her to find the “next chapter” in her life.

“My life is still clearly dishevelled. I don’t have a clear plan,” Ms Hill told the magazine. “Planning for having a kid was not there, but it’s also something where I’m 34 years old, it was clearly, like, a miracle baby.”

Her husband, Alex Thomas, was described as a “rock” who had been with her through the “trauma” of her Congressional scandal, and the death of her brother.

The former Playboy reporter, who was pictured with the former congresswoman just weeks after she filed for divorce from her first husband in 2019, was also there on the night Ms Hill said she considered killing herself.

Progressive Democrats who were her former colleagues in Congress, including “Squad” members Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib, were also described as having supported Ms Hill after the scandal unfolded.

“I was the first very big public case of a public official who had this happen and especially weaponised politically. And I think that for me, it was like, ‘Oh, my God, there are so many people who this could happen to’. It’s going to stop women, especially young women, from running for office,” Ms Hill said in the interview.

“I knew from the beginning that there was a chance I could be on the hook for all of that, but I felt like I had to do something to try and fight it.”

In her resignation speech, Ms Hill blamed a “double standard” and “a misogynistic culture that gleefully consumed my naked pictures, capitalised on my sexuality, and enabled my abusive ex to continue that abuse, this time with the entire country watching”.

Her former husband denies the claims she was abused.

Ms Hill, meanwhile, told Vanity Fair that she was considering bankruptcy following her defeat in court over the publishing of naked pictures in 2019 and must pay the Daily Mail almost $400,000 (£290,000).

The judge ruled in favour of the publisher, citing California law that allows free speech for media outlets in cases involving defamation.