"I am not proud of my personal conduct," Rep. Cindy Gamrat says eight months after being sworn into her first elective office,

The partner in an adultery cover-up scandal ends a week of silence Friday afternoon at her attorney's East Lansing office, jammed with live-tweeting reporters. Her husband, Joe, stood alongside her.

"I take full responsibility," the Republican said with visible and audible emotion. Gamrat vowed not to resign, as of now, but added: "Over the weeks and months to come, I will have some hard decisions to make. . . . At this point, I'm leaving all the options on the table. . . .

"I don't think that's a decision I'm prepared to make today. I'm here to apologize for my conduct. . . . I am sincerely sorry."

She acknowledged that some voters in her district have asked her to leave office. "I've considered that quite a bit," she acknowledged. In the short term, Gamrat added: "I look forward to re-engaging with my constituents." 


Rep. Cindy Gamrat at the news conference. (Photo via WILX).

The 42-year-old Republican lawmaker from West Michigan answered about a half-dozen questions after reading a statement, interrupted briefly several times by tears. In one response, she described her relationship with Rep. Todd Courser as "professional," and in another she denied that an aide's dismissal was :"because of a personal indiscretion on my part."

A Detroit News report by Chad Livengood seven days earlier broke the news that Gamrat and Courser had something racy to hide and that he came up with an offbeat "false flag" scheme to divert attention. 

The East Lansing appearance is her first since  The News expose changed her life with a lurid, novelistic tale involving sex, lies and audiotape.

Livengood reported last Friday that Courser of Lapeer, who shares a House office and political affiliation with Gamrat, devised a wacky scheme to offset an expected disclosure of their intimate relationship. Courser asked an aide to spread a phony report in May about himself and gay sex-for-hire -- a tactic he said Gamrat knew about, a recording by the aide shows.

On Friday, Gamrat addressed that last claim: "I was unaware it (false email) was sent and also of its content until a reporter pointed it out to me." 

A House inquiry is looking into whether the Republican pair used staff or equipment to cover up adultery.

At her media session, Gamrat said: "Under no circumstances was anyone o my staff terminated because of a personal indiscretion on my part."


Some media members staked out a spot more than an hour before Friday's briefing. (Twitter photo by Kathy Gray)

Courser and Gamrat, a mother of three, are Tea Party allies who combined their staffs and work space. In June they fired two aides suspected of disloyalty. A third staffer quit two months earlier.

While Courser tries to explain himself in near-daily tweets and lengthy Facebook posts on his personal and political pages, Gamrat had kept mum and secluded. She cancelled a 75-minute meeting with constituents in her district that had been scheduled Monday night.

In his live-tweet coverage, the reporter who broke the saga observes:

Our earlier coverage: