The Hill News

The fired spokesman for Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said he had made mistakes while working at the Capitol and that he regrets embarrassing his former boss.

"I did lose my way a little bit," Kurt Bardella told The North County Times in his first interview since his firing. "Certainly, in this case, what I did left people in the reporting community uncomfortable."

{mosads}Bardella was fired after he was caught sharing reporters’ e-mails without their knowledge with Mark Leibovich, a New York Times reporter who is working on a book about the culture of Washington. In a statement at the time, Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said Bardella sharing those e-mails was “a ! basic breach of trust with the reporters it was his job to assist” and fired him.

Since his termination, Bardella said he had talked to his former boss and that he chief regret was embarrassing him.

"He just called me as a friend to ask how I was doing and to tell me that he had been through rough spots in the past in his own life," Bardella told The North County Times. “What I'm most disappointed about is that in the end I failed him."

 Further, Bardella said he meant nothing “malicious” in sharing those e-mails.

“But I recognize I went into the project with some naivete,” he said. “I saw it as an opportunity to talk about what my interactions with the press were like. It wasn't something malicious.”