‘You exploited the murder’– Minnesota Senator’s Chief of Staff blasts Mike Lee in private email

SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — The chief of staff for Minnesota Senator Tina Smith blasted Senator Mike Lee in a candid email he sent to Senator Lee’s office after Lee posted several tweets that appeared to blame the shooting that killed a Minnesota state senator and injured another on the political left.

“You exploited the murder of a lifetime public servant and her husband to post some sick burns about Democrats. Did you see this as an excellent opportunity to get likes and retweet? Have you absolutely no conscience? No decency?” wrote Ed Shelleby, Chief of Staff to Senator Tina Smith, D-MN to Lee’s office which was obtained by ABC4.com.

Smith’s office also confirmed that Smith confronted Lee in person about those tweets on Monday where she later told reporters that she conveyed to Lee how much his comments added pain to the situation.

Lee’s weekend posts included a photo of the shooting suspect, Vance Boelter dressed in police gear as he reportedly knocked on the victims’ door with the caption, “this is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way,” along with posts blaming political violence on the left and suggesting Boelter didn’t align with President Donald Trump’s, MAGA movement or conservatives despite reports to the contrary.

It’s unclear exactly what Lee meant by the posts, his office did not respond to a request from ABC4.com for comment.

The full text of Shelleby’s email is found below:

I knew Melissa Hortman. Many people in this office did. She was a longtime friend of Senator Smith’s, who had seen her hours before she was murdered. So you’ll forgive my candor as I speak through enormous grief.

It is important for your office to know how much additional pain you’ve caused on an unspeakably horrific weekend. I am not sure what compelled you or your boss to say any of those things, which, in addition to being unconscionable, also may very well be untrue.  

But that is not the point. Why would you use the awesome power of a United States Senate Office to compound people’s grief? Is this how your team measures success? Using the office of US Senator to post not just one but a series of jokes about an assassination—is that a successful day of work on Team Lee? Did you come into the office Monday and feel proud of the work you did over the weekend?

Let’s recap Saturday so you fully understand what Minnesota was going through. Melissa Hortman and her husband were murdered. Sen. Hoffman and his wife were shot numerous times and remain hospitalized. By the grace of God it appears they will survive. Senators are discovered to be on a hit list of an armed man on the run—Senator Lee’s colleagues. And the decision of the office of Senator Mike Lee was not to publicly condemn the violence or to express condolences to her shattered children—it was to intimate that Melissa and Mark somehow deserved this? By making jokes? Did you have any consideration for the survivors in her family? For the Hoffmans in the hospital? For their families?

You exploited the murder of a lifetime public servant and her husband to post some sick burns about Democrats. Did you see this as an excellent opportunity to get likes and retweet?   Have you absolutely no conscience? No decency?

I pray to God that none of you ever go through anything like this. I pray that Senator Lee and your office begin to see the people you work with in this building as colleagues and human beings. And I pray that if God forbid, you ever find yourselves having to deal with anything similar, you find yourselves on the receiving end of the kind of grace and compassion that Senator Mike Lee could not muster.

Lastly I suggest you take a few minutes today to read about Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark. They were remarkable people.  Here’s a story in the St. Paul Pioneer press called “Melissa Hortman: Once a teenager with a job making burritos, she became a powerful MN lawmaker who trained service dogs.” 

She was a force. And a human being. And I beg of you to exercise some restraint on social media as we continue to grieve.

Ed Shelleby
Office of Senator Tina Smith