(Newser) – Michigan has a bizarre political sex scandal on its hands. It seems that two conservative state lawmakers, Todd Courser and Cindy Gamrat, were having an affair, and they were worried it was about to go public, reports the Detroit News. Simple enough. And then the bizarre part: In recordings obtained by the newspaper, Courser asks one of his aides to anonymously distribute a fake email alleging that Courser had been caught having sex with a man behind a nightclub, along with a slew of other false allegations. The idea, he said, was to create a "controlled burn" of lies so that when allegations of his extramarital affair went public, they wouldn't seem so bad—and people might not believe them.

"It will make anything else that comes out after that—that isn’t a video—mundane, tame by comparison,” Courser is heard telling the aide. The email did indeed go out, but the aide, who made the secret recording, balked at sending it. He was fired soon after, as was one of Gamrat's aides, for unspecified reasons. The two freshman lawmakers—who have loudly championed "traditional marriage and traditional morality," notes the Daily Beast—are now under investigation by the state House to see whether they used their taxpayer-funded offices to try to conceal their relationship, reports the Detroit Free Press. (Read more state lawmaker stories.)

