Rep. Todd Courser, a Republican lawmaker in Michigan, has been accused of having an affair with one of his colleagues, Rep. Cindy Gamrat.

What truly puts this story into WTF-ville, though, is that Courser made a staffer send out a bogus email claiming the lawmaker paid a male prostitute for sex outside a nightclub in Lansing.

Courser believed this "smear campaign" would make reports of an extramarital affair with Gamrat seem tame in comparison.

In an audio recording, Courser read portions of the message, claiming it was "a burn," "a scam," to try and "innoculate the herd from gutter politics that are coming."

The e-mail, widely distributed to state Republicans in May, painted Courser as a wanton sexual deviant.

"This is the best we came up with," he was taped telling an aide. "Neither one of us want to be on someone's leash. Neither one of us want to be in Lansing if this is the way we have to do it."

House Speaker Kevin Cotter has ordered an investigation and sources say could face criminal misconduct charges.

"It's the most bizarre, over-the-top thing I've ever read in political dishonesty," former Wayne County prosecutor Gary M. Wilson told the Detroit Free Press. "This is stunning."

Gamrat and Courser share staff, and are among the most conservative members of the Michigan Legislature. Courser has demonstrated at abortion clinics, taken pictures of his kids holding semi-automatic weapons and introduced a bill to change how marriage licenses are issues so clerks wouldn't have to deal with gay couples.

When the Supreme Court affirmed the freedom to marry, Courser called it "a crushing day for those who believe in traditional marriage and traditional morality."

In a statement, Equality Michigan said, "These self-proclaimed 'moral authorities' have built their political careers by demeaning our lives and our relationships as the degradation of marriage and society, when they had to look no further than the mirror."