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 she behaved inappropriately toward him and other members of his department, the local NBC affiliate reported Wednesday.

The city has 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 in an April 1 letter his lawyer sent 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.

Henry sent the letter of complaint after having become “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 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 allegations of inappropriate communications.

Madel wrote 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.”

In a written statement Wednesday, Her said she has cooperated with the investigation and believes the “full facts will come to light.”

“As Mayor, I take my responsibility to treat every employee with professionalism and respect very seriously. I recognize that some of my attempts at humor fell short of the standard I expect of myself,” she said.

Police spokesperson Nikki Muehlhausen said, “Chief Henry and the department has no comment at this time.”

The Star Tribune reported that Resolute Law, based in St. Cloud and described on its website as a “ women-owned firm ,” has been hired to investigate the allegations.

The law firm did not respond to a request for comment on the status of the investigation.

Her, 53, was born in Laos and spent part of her childhood in a refugee camp. She was 3 when she arrived in the U.S., and she grew up in Illinois and Wisconsin, according to her campaign biography .

The Star Tribune reported that she had faced an accusation of inappropriate behavior before.

Her 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 that Her 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 Her had played a role in the woman’s removal from the National Kidney Foundation Board, the newspaper reported.