Did John Fleming just speak out of turn?

Amid all the scrambling for leadership positions in the midst of John Boehner’s impending resignation as Speaker of the House, Trey Gowdy’s name has been a prominent one on social media as a potential candidate to replace Boehner or Kevin McCarthy as House Majority Leader.

Gowdy has denied interest in any leadership positions, though, and says his main item of interest is his work with the Benghazi select committee – which, with the release of Hillary Clinton’s e-mails is beginning to get quite interesting.

But according to one of Gowdy’s colleagues, Rep. John Fleming (R-LA), Gowdy isn’t just uninterested in leadership – he’s uninterested in the House of Representatives.

Rep. John Fleming, R-La., said Wednesday morning that Tea Party favorite Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., won’t run for a fourth term, and instead plans to retire at the end of the current Congress to return to his home state.

“Trey wants to go back to South Carolina, and God bless him for that,”Fleming said on C-SPAN. When asked if that’s what Gowdy has told other Republicans, Fleming confirmed it.

“At the end of his term, yes,” he said. “He plans to go back home, and he wants to finish his work on the Benghazi special committee. But he loves South Carolina and he loves his family, and he wants to go back and spend the rest of his life there.”

“He’ll be sorely missed,” he added.

But Gowdy’s staff didn’t offer any confirmation of what Fleming said.

“No, he is not announcing his retirement,” Gowdy spokeswoman Amanda Duvall told the Washington Examiner. “He has not made any announcement on 2016, anything else is incorrect.”

If Gowdy were to leave Congress, it would disappoint lots of people who have become fans of his prosecutorial interrogations of witnesses at Congressional hearings. He’s become one of the more popular members of the House, and his retirement would make the problem of a dearth of charismatic figures in that body on the Republican side even larger.

But as of right now, Fleming may have run with something he heard that wasn’t quite true. Gowdy might have expressed frustration with Congress and he took that as definitive.

Or Fleming might be right.

But nobody likes the bearer of bad news, particularly unconfirmed bad news. That may be what Fleming finds himself to be today.

UPDATE: Uh, oh.

Matt Moore is the chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party, and he’s all over Twitter complaining about the Washington Examiner piece this morning quoting Fleming on CSPAN…

Folks, Rep. Trey Gowdy @TGowdySC has NOT announced his retirement. Just confirmed with his office.

— Matt Moore (@MattMooreSC) September 30, 2015

Pathetic, clickbait journalism –> http://t.co/E0mlf07yQL

— Matt Moore (@MattMooreSC) September 30, 2015

Now it’s officially a mess.