Ex-Lawmaker Settles Suit Related to His Bizarre Plot to Hide Workplace Affair

Dale G. Young/Detroit News via AP Todd Courser

A former Michigan lawmaker agreed to pay $20,000 to The Detroit News to settle a defamation lawsuit he filed over coverage of a scheme he concocted to cover up a workplace affair.

The court docket states that a settlement was reached on Monday.

The parties had been set to appear for oral arguments the following day in an ongoing appeal of the lawsuit, according to a News article about the settlement.

Former Rep. Todd Courser had originally filed the lawsuit against the paper in 2018 over a 2015 report it published on his attempt to cover up an affair with another lawmaker.

Gary Miles, publisher and editor of the News, said that Courser's settlement "sends a message that frivolous lawsuits against news organizations for performing their duties under the First Amendment will not be taken lightly," according to the Associated Press.

Courser did not immediately respond to PEOPLE's request for comment on the settlement. His attorney told the News that Courser wanted to "move on," but the attorney insisted there had been "a strong case on appeal"

According to the News, the settlement money will be donated to scholarships.

Courser, 48, resigned from the Michigan statehouse in 2015 after it was revealed he attempted to hide his extramarital relationship with a fellow Republican lawmaker, former Rep. Cindy Gamrat.

The News reported that "interviews with former House employees and ... recordings showed Courser and Gamrat used their taxpayer-funded offices to maintain and cover up their relationship."

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David Eggert/AP/Shutterstock Todd Courser

Dale G. Young /Detroit News via AP Todd Courser

Courser had asked an aide to help him try and undercut an anonymous leak about his affair by sending a sexuality explicit, fake mass email to Republican activists and operatives claiming that he was addicted to porn and drugs and had sex with a man "behind a Lansing nightclub," according to the audio published by the News in 2015.

The aide who made those recordings later told ABC News: "I couldn't believe what he was asking me. And I couldn't do it."

The fake email was part of Courser's plot to try and convince his colleagues not to believe an anonymous accusation about his affair with Gamrat, The Detroit Free Press reported at the time.

A state probe then revealed the anonymous accusation ended up being from Gamrat's husband, according to the newspaper.

In the audio from 2015, Courser referred to the scheme as a "controlled burn" and said "it will make anything else that comes out after that — that isn't a video — mundane, tame by comparison."

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Courser resigned in 2015 from his seat in the state legislature. Gamrat was expelled by the statehouse with a landslide vote.

Courser initially faced a felony charge over the matter, according to the AP, and potentially up to a year in jail before he pleaded "no contest" to a misdemeanor in 2019. There was not enough evidence to press charges against Gamrat, a judge said.

"This case has had a long, torturous history," Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said in a statement at the time, according to the Free Press, "and his decision to acknowledge responsibility for his actions is long overdue."

Courser told ABC in 2016: "Everybody would hear that I'm a believer in Christ. They wouldn't hear the part that I'm failed and flawed, you know, like everybody else."