St. Paul’s first female Mayor under investigation after police chief’s sexual harassment complaint

The St. Paul, Minnesota, police chief has submitted a sexual harassment complaint against the city’s first female mayor, alleging that she behaved inappropriately toward him and other members of his department, the local NBC affiliate reported Wednesday. The city has now hired an outside law firm to investigate the allegations against Mayor Kaohly Her, who has been in office for just seven months. Chief Axel Henry, who has led the St. Paul Police Department since 2022, outlined the allegations against Her in an April 1 letter sent by his lawyer to to the St. Paul City Attorney. “The City is on notice that Mayor Her has engaged in illegal conduct towards City employees,” attorney Christopher Madel wrote in the letter, which was obtained by the NBC affiliate, KARE 11. Henry sent the letter of complaint against Her after “becoming aware that the Mayor’s conduct has extended beyond isolated incidents and has included sexual harassment of subordinate City employees, including members of the Saint Paul Police Department,” Madel wrote. “Chief Henry is not only seeking to address the wrongdoing but also create a measure of protection for his team, signaling that such conduct will not be tolerated,” Madel wrote. Included with the letter is a screenshot of an alleged text message from Her to an unnamed city employee that reads “Happy Weiner (sic) Wednesday! Wish I was having a (hot dog emoji) with you all on 6 today!” Below the text message is an internet meme showing a swaddled baby with an adult’s head, which has been redacted, The Minnesota Star Tribune reported. “When she wraps you up in her blanket after you gave her a good weinering,” reads the caption. Wienering is an internet slang term for sexual intercourse and is frequently misspelled as weinering. The letter alleges that “Her has used one or more mobile phones to communicate inappropriate, and, indeed, unlawful text messages.” But it does not spell out any other specific examples of alleged inappropriate communications. Madel wrote in the letter that future litigation is “reasonably foreseeable” and demanded that the city “immediately take all steps necessary to perform a full filesystem extraction of each of Mayor Her’s mobile phones.” Matt Wagenius, a spokesperson for the mayor, did not respond to an email from NBC News for comment. “Chief Henry and the department has no comment at this time,” police spokesperson Nikki Muehlhausen said. The Star Tribune reported that Resolute Law, based St. Cloud and describes on its website as a “women-owned firm,” has been hired to investigate the allegations against the mayor. The law firm did not respond to a request for comment on the status of the investigation. The mayor, 53, was born in Laos and spent part of her childhood in a refugee camp. She was three when she arrived in the U.S. and grew up in Illinois and Wisconsin, according to her campaign biography. The Star Tribune reported that the mayor had faced an accusation of inappropriate behavior before. The mayor was hit with a restraining order petition last year by a former friend who claimed she had sent her “inappropriate or sexualized questions” and had gotten her removed from the National Kidney Foundation Board. The petition was denied by Ramsey County District Court Referee Elizabeth Clysdale who wrote that the text messages filed showed the mayor had not threatened her former friend and that Her’s husband had tried to help resolve the issue. Clysdale also wrote there was no proof that the mayor had played a role in the woman’s removal from the National Kidney Foundation Board, the newspaper reported.