Spilling the tea.

Bachelor Nation got to know Clayton Echard as the leading man on Season 26 of “The Bachelor,” where he famously got rejected by Susie Evans after proposing. The two later got back together but ended up splitting ways in 2022. 

For the past few years, Clayton has been facing a paternity scam as a woman falsely claimed the former Bachelor was the father of her child. After some investigating, Clayton discovered she was a full-time scam artist and has done this to multiple other men as well. 

Since then, he’s been working to clear his name and get justice for himself as well as the other people involved.

This week, Clayton reunited with his ex Rachel Recchia on the “Bachelor Happy Hour” podcast and revealed how reconnecting with his other ex Susie led to the paternity scandal. 

During his interview, Rachel and Clayton discussed the former Bachelor’s new podcast covering this scam, and she pointed out that Susie was interviewed. 

Rachel asked what Susie’s role has been in all of this, and he revealed that she was around when the whole situation began. 

He said, “She was in the, I don’t want to say, in the mix of it. I kind of talked about this in the podcast or I’ve said it in other podcasts, I had seen Susie a week and a half prior to me actually hooking up with this Laura girl. And so I was really, really bothered by when I met up with Susie, a lot of the old emotions came back. And it was like maybe we should try this again. It was a lot of those feelings.”

Clayton continued, confessing, “So I end up getting, you know, I went home and I was using marijuana heavily to cope because I was trying to numb myself because I felt overwhelmed with emotion. And I was like, ‘I just need to cut this feeling out. I can’t handle this with sober mind.’ So as it started to begin, I had just seen her, so we were already kind of chatting a little bit and I shared this with her. And so then she was just kind of in the background providing [support].” 

Clayton then revealed that the reason the paternity scam even started was due to trying to cope with seeing his ex. 

“She was there at the beginning of it and that’s why they approached her because I had brought up the reason why I even was under the influence of marijuana that night and decided to engage with this Laura girl,” he said, “was because I was medicating myself with marijuana trying to cope with the emotions that were coming up from the previous week when I was with her.” 

Hear more of what Clayton had to say in the full episode of “Bachelor Happy Hour” below!