Rep. Gamrat Expelled, Courser Resigns After Affair Cover-Up

LANSING (WWJ/AP) - One socially conservative Michigan lawmaker was expelled from office and another resigned early Friday after they were embroiled in scandal over their extramarital affair and an attempt to hide it with a strange fictional email.

Republican Rep. Cindy Gamrat became just the fourth legislator to be kicked out in state history shortly after 4 a.m. An hour earlier, GOP Rep. Todd Courser resigned, effective immediately, when it became clear majority Republicans had secured votes from enough Democrats for his expulsion in exchange for the House asking the attorney general and state police to investigate the lawmakers.

Both were immediately escorted out of the chamber.

"I put everybody through a whole bunch — across the state, my own family, the constituents, the people in this room," Courser told reporters. "Whether it was the third vote or the fourth vote or the fifth vote, they were going to eventually get me."

Gamrat, who was tossed on a 91-12 vote, declined comment while leaving the Capitol.

"I have done everything I can to redeem the situation," she said shortly before in her speech asking for a censure, which would have let her stay on the job with restrictions. "I am sincerely sorry for what it's caused."

Courser, 43, of Lapeer in Michigan's Thumb region, admitted sending an "outlandish" phony email to GOP activists and others in May claiming he was caught with a male prostitute. The email was intended to make his affair with the 42-year-old Gamrat appear less believable if it were exposed by an anonymous blackmailer who Courser said was demanding his resignation.

[Criminal Police Probe Planned In Lawmaker's Affair Cover-Up]

The self-smear email called Courser a "bi-sexual porn addicted sex deviant" and "gun toting Bible thumping ... freak" and Gamrat a "tramp."

Gamrat, from Plainwell in the southwestern part of the state, said she discussed the plot with Courser but did not know the email's sexually explicit content before it was sent.

On Thursday, a special House committee recommended the expulsion of both legislators. But the full chamber then deadlocked for hours, as more than two dozen Democrats refused to vote.

They attacked the "sham" investigation as rushed and self-serving. They questioned why two "whistleblower" aides to Courser and Gamrat were allowed to be fired by GOP leadership, since the speaker's office had known of problems in the lawmakers' combined office.

The House was six votes short of the two-thirds supermajority needed under the state constitution. More than two dozen minority Democrats initially abstained from voting and criticized the process.

In calling for both legislators' expulsion, Rep. Ed McBroom, a Republican from Vulcan in the Upper Peninsula who chaired the disciplinary panel, said: "These two members have obliterated the public trust. They've obliterated the trust of their colleagues. And each day that they continue here they reduce the public trust in this institution."

The scandal unfolded last month after a staffer the couple shared was fired in July. Ben Graham gave The Detroit News a secret audio recording of Courser demanding that he send the email to "inoculate the herd," an apparent reference to Courser's supporters. While Graham refused and the email was likely legal, the plot was unethical, according to a House Business Office probe that alleged dishonesty, misconduct and misuse of public resources extending beyond the affair and fictional email.

State police are investigating the alleged blackmail and this week obtained a warrant for records from a phone company related to a prepaid, or "burner," phone from which Courser said he received threatening text messages.

Republican Speaker Kevin Cotter said it was a "sad day," but it was important to address a "cloud hanging over us for some time."

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