In this audio recording, secretly taped by his aide Ben Graham on May 19 2015, Republican senator Todd Courser is a desperate man, rapidly drowning but still fighting for air. Courser admits he’s been having an extramarital affair with Republican senator Cindy Gamrat (at the time, both politicians were married with children). The affair has been discovered by an anonymous blackmailer (later revealed to be Gamrat’s husband), and Courser outlines to his dumbfounded aide a harebrained scheme to detract attention from the scandal. He plans to send out a “false flag e-mail” from a fake address alleging that he is a drug user, child molester, “bi-sexual porn addicted sex deviant”, and “gun-toting, Bible-thumping, cock-sucking freak” who has been caught having “male on male paid sex behind a Lansing nightclub”. Courser agrees that the e-mail is “over-the-top”, but tells his doubtful aide that it will “inoculate the herd” because the “real” scandal will be hidden in the ramblings of the anonymous message.

Courser is clearly at the end of his tether, but his refusal to resign makes it difficult to sympathize with him: the man’s egotism is obviously about to take him down. And it did. Both Michigan lawmakers resigned after it was revealed they had been cheating on their spouses and then using taxpayer-funded offices and staff to cover it up.

Listen to the episode here.

Police Report on Extortion Texts

House of Michigan Representatives Report on the Courser Gamrat Affair