State Rep. Claims He Was Blackmailed Into Planting Fake Gay Sex Rumor About Himself
Michigan Rep. Todd Courser, the man who sent an anonymous mass email to start a fake gay sex rumor about himself to deflect attention from the real extramarital affair he had with fellow state representative Cindy Gamrat, now says he was blackmailed into sending the email by something called the “Lansing mafia” and his now-former aides.
Courser made the allegations in a new recording, which he released on his website and sent to the Detroit Free Press. Among those blamed in the recording, which is about as crazy as you’d expect, are Courser’s former aides Ben Graham, Josh Cline, and Keith Allard, plus unnamed people behind the “clandestine operations to control public officials” in Michigan.
“The e-mail was put in motion to disrupt the blackmailer and give me some clues as to the surveillance of my life. It was all done in a pressure cooker and … it put me in a situation where a bad choice was the choice that I made,” he said in the recording. “But to change the country, men and women must be able to stand unafraid even when they’re a broken messenger. And I’m a certainly a broken messenger. I have chosen to stay and make them play their hand. I think it is absolutely necessary to have these clandestine operations to control public officials be exposed. So I have refused to leave quietly and have decided that these efforts really need to come out.”
Later in the tape, Courser explained why he didn’t leave office or publicly admit the affair. “I could have resigned, this is really the option that the anonymous texter wanted and done so quietly,” he said. “But that would have allowed my personal issues to rule the day. I essentially would have submitted to the authority of the establishment machine and in doing so to protect myself and my family. And most of you would say this is the right decision. But I really thought that this would allow them to win.”
Courser apologized to his wife, who he said knew about the affair, and children, as well as Gamrat, her family, and his constituents. “I don’t know at what point I can get past the guilt and shame I feel,” he said. “But first and foremost I have to ask for forgiveness from God and I have been doing that.”
On May 20, Courser—or someone he hired—sent out an anonymous mass email to influential Michigan Republicans claiming he had been caught having sex with male prostitute behind a Lansing nightclub in attempt to, somehow, distract people from the fact that he was having an affair with Gamrat, a fellow Tea Party leader. Ben Graham, Courser’s former aide, sent a recording of the representative explaining the scheme the Detroit News earlier this month, after Courser fired him for refusing to send the mass email.
“It will make anything else that comes out after that — that isn’t a video — mundane, tame by comparison,” Courser said in that recording. “I need a controlled burn.”
Courser and Gamrat both refused to comment to the Free Press about the new recording, and the state legislature is now investigating whether both used their staff to cover up their alleged affair.
