Two former aides to state Representatives Todd Courser and Cindy Gamrat have filed a federal whistleblower lawsuit against the Michigan House of Representatives.
Keith Allard and Benjamin Graham are already suing Courser and Gamrat in a separate lawsuit, but they also say they were fired by the state House for reporting malfeasance they witnessed at work and were ignored by senior Republicans, including the House speaker.
Sarah Howard is their attorney. She says they were punished for revealing the truth.
“Not only was nothing done about it, there were attempts to hide the fact that had known about it earlier, and not simply these two kids should never been fired over it,” she said. “Without them, I don’t think it would ever have seen the light of day.”
Courser and Gamrat were forced out of office because of an over-the-top scheme to hide an extra-marital affair that was revealed as the result of conversations secretly recorded by Graham. The whistleblower lawsuit claims the two staffers lost their jobs and had their reputations tarnished because the House leadership wanted to cover up their handling of the Courser-Gamrat matter. It also says House Speaker Kevin Cotter (R-Mt. Pleasant) knew what was going on before the affair became public. A spokesman for House Speaker Kevin Cotter says the staffers were fired for poor job performance. And he says Cotter was not aware of the problems reported by the staffers until stories appeared in The Detroit News.
