My recollection is that he briefly recounted his rationale for resigning his post; and that rationale was not one that amounts to a disgraceful reason.
I’d just rather Newt had taken the charges and crammed them up Romney’s fundamental orifice.
Loss of confidence in his ability as Speaker (he was poorly slotted there, anyway -- he needed to be throwing grenades, not doing deals). Clinton had roughed him and Dole up on the 1995 government shutdown (when they almost got him to sign their budget, until Tommy Dasschole got Beastwoman to help him break up that outburst of cooperativeness and get nasty instead), Slick had got reelected President, and then he had almost slipped the noose of impeachment by spiking up the black vote 60% in the 1998 by-election, which almost cost the GOP the House, and which the GOP leadership absolutely did not see coming.
If they'd lost the House, there'd have been no impeachment trial -- which was what Clinton was after, and barely missed. Newt, Dick Armey, and Tom Delay should have seen that attempt coming (as someone should have seen Clinton's field-testing "pre-campaign" in summer 1995 coming, which paved the way to his 1996 total win over Bob Dole), and the fact that they didn't showed that the House leadership was falling down and being consistently outmaneuvered by the Clinton machine. With the help of Chinese intelligence (and probably KGB Active Measures, whatever was left of it, when you think about it), so that the fair assessment of GOP leadership back then will have to await the book that elucidates our recent history of Soviet, Chinese, and other outside manipulation of the American political process and government.