A former Florida state House candidate who dropped out of the race last month has admitted to lying about treating victims of the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting.

Elizabeth McCarthy first made the claim in a March 2019 town hall hosted by Florida state Rep. Darren Soto before she announced that she was running.

She described personally removing 77 bullets from 32 people while working as an emergency room doctor.

“That night, because I’m gay, it struck me even harder,” she said during the town hall. “Because these were my people.”

But McCarthy, a Democrat, admitted July 9 to the Florida Department of Health that she had lied about her aiding Pulse victims.

"It is a false statement. I just made it up," she said to state investigators, according to lawsuit documents obtained by USA TODAY.

McCarthy claimed to have a medical degree from the University of Central Florida in 2014, specializing in cardiology.

But the school had no record of her earning a degree, a previous investigation by Florida Politics found. The Florida Department of Health said that she was never a licensed doctor and that her nursing license expired in 2005.

Before running, McCarthy had been the registered agent for a since-dissolved nonprofit called C.A.R.E. for Women Foundation Inc. from 2006 to 2014, per the news site.

He's fired:Hero cop of Pulse shooting is being terminated from force

McCarthy, while speaking to investigators, admitted that she had lied about her education and had never attended medical school.

She told them that she was “portraying a life that wasn’t true."

“I wanted to be somebody in the community, and I’m sorry,” she said, according to the documents.

“I’m sorry that I gave any impersonation. I knew it was wrong and I should have stopped — by no means did I ever mean to put anybody in jeopardy.”

After backlash from both her party and social media for her lie following a June 15 Florida Politics report, McCarthy wrote in a since-deleted Facebook post that the reports were “campaign smearing."

“I did think about shutting down my campaign after this attack I was not ready for. I am not going to do that,” McCarthy wrote in the post. “I have a passion for legislation, apparently not up to snuff on campaigning but I am learning."

McCarthy dropped out of the race June 28.

The Florida Department of Health is charging McCarthy with violating state law by lying about being a doctor.

She also has been fined $3,094.95 and is prohibited from telling anyone else that she is a doctor.

The election race is now between Republican state Rep. David Smith and Democrat Lee Mangold.

Follow Elinor Aspegren on Twitter: @elinoraspegren