Senate ethics committee delays action on complaint against DFL Sen. Nicole Mitchell

A bipartisan Senate ethics committee on Tuesday voted to delay taking action on a complaint filed against Sen. Nicole Mitchell, DFL-Woodbury, who last month was charged with first-degree burglary, a felony.

Senate Republicans filed an ethics complaint arguing that Mitchell had violated the Minnesota Senate’s standards of ethical conduct when she allegedly broke into her stepmother’s Detroit Lakes home intending to take several sentimental items belonging to her late father on April 22. 

The committee voted to reconvene on June 12 — two days after Mitchell’s next scheduled court appearance and well after the session ends on May 20. 

Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy, DFL-St. Paul, removed Mitchell from her committee assignments and said she will no longer participate in caucus meetings, though she’s still a member of the caucus and voting on bills.

Detroit Lakes police arrested Mitchell after finding her in the basement dressed in black clothing and a black hat — officers also found a flashlight covered by a black sock next to her, according to the incident report. While being arrested, Mitchell allegedly told her stepmother she was “just trying to get a couple of my dad’s things because you wouldn’t talk to me anymore.”

The next day, Mitchell said in a statement that she was conducting a welfare check on her stepmother and she startled the stepmother. Mitchell denied stealing anything from the home and said her stepmother has Alzheimer’s and associated paranoia. 

Senate Republicans said Mitchell’s alleged conduct broke three Senate rules: She didn’t adhere to “the highest standard of ethical conduct” expected of senators; she published a statement that was “false or clearly misleading”; and her conduct betrayed the public’s trust and her actions brought “the Senate into dishonor or disrepute.”

Mitchell pleaded the Fifth Amendment during the Senate Subcommittee on Ethical Conduct hearing and didn’t answer any questions. Her attorney, Bruce Ringstrom Jr., criticized the ethics investigation and said senators were trying to force Mitchell to forgo her right to defend herself and skirt due process.

“A witch hunt is premised on the idea of deciding on someone’s guilt without regard to the evidence in the case, without allowing the person to defend themselves … here the term fits,” Ringstrom said. “By conducting an ethics investigation before the criminal case, you are participating in the witch hunt.”

Ringstrom may have been needling Republican senators with the term: In recent years, former President Donald Trump has used the moniker “witch hunt” to describe investigations of his conduct. 

He argued the ethics committee should not make a ruling on the complaint until Mitchell’s criminal proceedings are done.

“Sen. Mitchell desperately wants to tell her story, but I am not letting her,” Ringstrom said.

Ringstrom suggested during the committee hearing that Mitchell intends to plead not guilty in her criminal case and said she wants to testify in her own defense at trial.

Sen. Eric Lucero, R-St. Michael, and Sen. Karin Housley, R-Stillwater, walked the committee through their caucus’ ethics complaint. Senate Republicans cited the criminal complaint against Mitchell, the 911 transcript and media reports regarding her arrest.

“Are Minnesotans supposed to trust senators facing serious felony burglary charges? … Do we hold this body’s reputation to the highest standard when its members are accused of engaging in a crime of violence?” Lucero asked the committee.

Democratic-Farmer-Labor legislators are looking to pass influential legislation implementing new policy affecting everything from workers rights to health care, as well as some new spending and an infrastructure package — most of which will require Mitchell’s vote given the DFL’s narrow 34-33 majority. 

Senate President Bobby Joe Champion, a member of the four-person ethics committee, said the evidence Republicans cited in their complaint amounted to mere allegations. He also suggested that articles about Mitchell and her arrest may not be true and she, or her attorney, could have been misquoted.

“We know media outlets don’t always have to tell the truth,” Champion said. 

(The Reformer’s ethics code requires truth-telling.)

Ringstrom questioned Housley and Lucero as if the hearing room were a courtroom and treated the questioning like a cross-examination. He grilled the senators about whether they verified anything in their complaint. The senators said they relied on what is in the public record, but Ringstrom noted that their complaint relied almost entirely on allegations, not facts proven in court.

Ringstrom told the committee that the police’s criminal complaint is often incorrect, and that Republicans were forcing Mitchell to forgo her rights to defend herself. 

“When a person charged with a crime disputes the allegations, it makes perfect sense that their explanation is different from the government’s,” Ringstrom said. “While the authors of this ethics complaint may believe that whenever the government or its agents make a claim, that claim must be right, those of us who practice criminal defense know that the government is often wrong.”

Before the ethics committee took up the complaint against Mitchell, they considered a complaint filed by Sen. Erin Maye Quade, DFL-Apple Valley, against Sen. Glenn Gruenhagen, R-Glencoe. Last year, Gruenhagen sent senators a link to a Google search that included videos of minors undergoing gender affirmation surgery that he said was “extremely graphic and disturbing.” 

This was around the time last when DFL lawmakers were debating the bill making Minnesota a refuge state for transgender people.

Gruenhagen said he sent a medical video, intentionally cautioning it was graphic, and said he intended to educate senators about gender-affirming care. He said Maye Quade’s ethics complaint was “frivolous.”

Republicans on the ethics committee attempted to dismiss the complaint against Gruenhagen, but the four-person committee voted 2-2 along party lines, meaning the motion failed. The committee will reconvene on the Gruenhagen complaint Wednesday.