Julie Frye-Mueller got herself suspended from the Senate by being stupid, gross, rude, and personally intrusive. After telling a Legislative Research Council employee that the employee was killing her new baby with vaccines, Frye-Mueller urged the employee to breastfeed and, with Frye-Mueller’s husband present, told the LRC employee to have the employee’s husband suck the employee’s breasts to stimulate milk production. To make sure the employee got the picture, Frye-Mueller gestured to her own chest and invited her husband to lewdly concur that a good time was to be had in such marital activity.
So says the statement posted today by the Senate Select Committee on Discipline and Expulsion describing the meeting that took place on Tuesday afternoon, January 24, between then Senator-Frye-Mueller, Frye-Mueller’s husband Mike, and a still unnamed LRC staffer in the staffer’s Capitol office.
Good grief. This behavior is so ridiculously, cluelessly bad, it deserves all the ridicule we can give it. Thus… Boobgate.
Among everything that is wrong with the conduct that the LRC staffer describes in this meeting, this January 24 memo indicates that Frye-Mueller has subsequently and publicly lied about what happened. On Saturday, Frye-Mueller told a crowd of supporters in Rapid City that the conversation she had with a female LRC staffer was “a private and confidential conversation between women.” The memo indicates last Tuesday’s interaction was not private, confidential, or between women. It included Frye-Mueller’s husband, who has no business in the LRC staff offices in the first place, let alone any appropriate role in commenting on, affirming, smiling at, or even listening to his wife discuss another woman’s breasts and marital relations with that woman, without that woman’s invitation.
Frye-Mueller has deliberately concealed her husband’s very salient and very inappropriate presence at Tuesday’s conversation. Frye-Mueller has also concealed and misportrayed the ridiculously stupid, gross, rude, and personally intrusive statements she made to the LRC employee. She concealed that, with her husband watching and listening, she advised a state employee to engage in certain sexually arousing activity and talked about and physically suggested her own preferred sexually arousing activity. Frye-Mueller has compounded the inconsistency that Senate Majority Leader Casey Crabtree said last Friday already existed in previous statements Frye-Mueller had made about last week’s incident.
No, Julie Frye-Mueller hasn’t killed anybody, the way Jason Ravnsborg did. But in attempting to argue for keeping her Senate voting privileges, she has lied about the incident that prompted the Senate’s punishment and investigation. So maybe this incident should be called Liegate, or Julie-You-Lie-gate.
But it takes a real boob to think that such offensive behavior is acceptable for anybody in any workplace, not to mention a Senator in the Capitol. So I’m sticking with Boobgate.
Anti vaxxer anti masker….if she comes down with COVID she would just blame that on China or Biden. If she were to die from any preventable disease i suspect she would blame CDC for that. Typical west river wingnut.
Oh just Fug it. Yes I like books alot.
Or, apparently, she’d complain that her husband didn’t sufficiently titillate her.
This may not be the best week for middle-school field trips to the Capitol.
Is there a Department of Tourism or DOT advertisement lingering in this story? Geez national news here we come.
Whose boob is boobgate named after? Ms. Frye-Mueller, Mr. Mueller, or the as-yet-unnamed staffer?
You, grudz, named after you
Well, that certainly puts to rest my idle speculation about the staffer having perhaps been thin-skinned and over-reactive. And confirms my thoughts regarding the incivility of Frye-Mueller as well as her harebrained notions regarding vaccines.
…as well as the very real possibility of Frye-Mueller being so emotionally and mentally unstable—hence her husband’s ‘protection ‘—that she is fundamentally unfit to serve.
As we’ve discussed, it takes a lot of twisted to get bounced by the South Dakota Legislature. I hope that staff person gets some bit of justice, and Frye-Mueller gets the boot. She was way out of line. Schoenbeck was absolutely correct to suspend Frye-Mueller, but the Legislature needs to have the guts to do the right thing. One way or another they’ll face a lawsuit, but they have to protect staff Frye-Mueller.
Good Lord……welcome to South Dakota’s latest political scandal. The staffer did the right thing to report this. FM is totally wrong about the World Health Organization being against vaccinations and Down Syndrome is a genetic disease. As for people comparing this to the Dan Sutton case – these are different times.
Julie Frye-Mueller is a fruity, TMI ridiculer.
On that note, when’s Matt Althoff getting the boot for his conduct? Our gov would pry just replace him with the Lew. We’re funny when you get real chiefed and think about it all. Then we’re not.
O. M.G. X 1000. She is more than a few cards short of a full deck. ALLEGEDLY of course.
Ew
For a second I thought I was eighteen again and reading a letter in Penthouse Forum.
Ew ew ew.
Grudz, please don’t insult us or the LRC by trying to spin the Frye-Muellers’ misconduct back on the state employee.
I am so relieved that Frye-Mueller does not represent me in any manner.
Sorry, after having been called every filthy name in the book, verbal threats from students to slit my throat, an actual chest punch that could have killed me, and parents ranting, harassing me, and letters to get me fired, I got pretty thick skinned as a teacher. I always thought a school was a professional environment conducive to learning. however, in S.D., that is not so.
Obviously working in Pierre at our once prestigious capital building is stressful as well. But I wonder why this woman’s bizarre actions are not tolerated but others who are male can manhandle, rape, and kill yet still walk the halls and get a paycheck.
I know so many people who put up with more than this at a job. I empathize with the staffer so transfer her and make sure she gets an apology, discipline the witch with a slap on the boobs, and move on. If she does something extreme again, move it through some kind of process.
Sounds like we have had a snowflake melt-down in the state capital. I would hope that LRC staffers and legislators alike would stick to more substantial issues than the commotion brought forth from this incident.
Lost in all the boob fixation (which is bad enough) is that a sitting SD Senator thinks childhood vaccination causes Down Syndrome. I thought everyone learned in junior high science that it was a genetic abnormality caused by three copies of chromosome 21 rather that the standard two, this has been known to scientists for over 60 years. Your genes are set at conception, nine months before birth and there isn’t a damn thing anyone can do about it. How does someone with this level of misunderstanding of basic science get elected?
M, maybe this is the beachhead for a new age of civility?
Dearest M,
Ah, the old, “My situation is worse than yours, so get over it ” The victim should not be victimized again by having to change jobs.
F-M deserves due process. Then kick her out.
Rapists deserve due process, then kick them out.
I wish I could say I was surprised, Nick, but these days I’ve heard so much unscientific BS coming out of the conservativerse that nothing surprises me.
Anyway, we’ve got a boob fixation, a complete anti-vaxxer meltdown, and a sitting Senator whose husband accompanies her everywhere she goes. Apparently, from the boob fixation, they do have children, so where are they while hubby’s escorting her through the halls of Pierre?
Meanwhile, we’ve made the nationals:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/south-dakota-sen-julie-frye-mueller-benched-in-suckling-advice-scandal
Nice try at projection of naivete’, Nick. I know you know that an absence of knowledge of almost everything is an electoral requirement in most legislative districts in SoDak.
Down Syndrome is a genetic ‘disorder’ I should have written rather than disease.
What is with her husband calling the staffer and telling her he’s very protective of his wife and why is he working on bills?
Major creep factor going on.
I hereby project, on 31 January 2023, that this post will outstrip all Cory’s posts in 2023 for readership and commentary.
Over on Dakota Scout, all the comments so far are wanting to know the staffer’s name RIGHT NOW, which indicates that some people can hardly wait to doxx the woman.
Meanwhile, the truth is, in a right-to-work state like South Dakota, behavior like this would get anyone fired without any investigations or hearings. The whole deal with the couple’s breast-feeding demonstration would mean a very quick exit. But since this is the SD Legislature, which wants “rights for me but not for thee”, those right to work rules go out the window and we’ve got to have endless investigations – after all, who knows who’s the next legislator who’s going to “explain” things to a staffer? And it could be even worse next time. Got to protect their hind end.
So men ccean rape and exploit pages and kill and walk around in their jobs, a woman talks about books and has incorrect info on vaccines and is rude and she gets booted by suspending the rules? No.
Double standard.
Censure and move on, if you must.
How many months did Ravensborg get to work after he killed a man?? Oh let him have a fair trial, all the evidence, blah blah blah. Such Taliban honkiness.
She is guilty of bad behavior. Max, censure, minimum a personal private apology, without the husband present.
One party honky-ness and domination of the state only benefits those in power, not the whole state.
She was suspended without a fair trial. District 30 deserves her.
The Republicans always do the wrong, sexist racist anti Native American think, always.
Have the DemoRepublicans stood up unanimously urging her rights of due process?
Retire both Parties and their honky antics.
Write the new history of South Dakota with Progressives who will stop this sexist bullying in Pierre.
Did she also offer he husband cookies?
Good thing the Federal government has a presence in SoDak so the Federal government haters can use the judicial system for ridiculous lawsuits. Among other things, like funding the state.
Nick, in some of these folks’ “minds” the God/creator creature cannot make mistakes and any sort of genetic deformity, or such must be the work of the devil or some minion of the same (witch, demon, heathen, and now-a-days, a scientist).
ABC, can the GOP ever say that they were wrong about treatment of previous wrongdoers, or must they always hold those as their standard of conduct moving forward? Should doing the right thing be thrown in their face as hypocrisy or applauded as steps in the right direction? I know I don’t want more of the same, so how do they get to that better place of accountability?
Unbelievable. That is the kind of people we elect!
There are so many things wrong with this. First, her husband should not be allowed to sit in on any legislative mtgs. Second, Julie has a history of confronting people about vaccinations, covering your camera on your phone, computer, etc., and a variety of other issues she deems are taking away her freedoms. There is freedom of speech but accept that people won’t agree or listen and sometimes you pay the consequences for what you say.
I can’t wait to see how Mueller & Mueller are portrayed on South Park.
I just keep thinking that if someone did this in corporate America that they would be out on their buttocks so fast it would make your head spin. The fact that a superior (state senator) would have this conversation with a subordinate (LRC staffer) would lead to a HUGE lawsuit that would go to a HUGE settlement offer by the company as they are sending out the email saying that JMF is leaving to spend more time with their family. The fact that JMF’s husband was in the room just turns this fecal-matter storm up to 11.
This is just beyond the pale.
And the fact that people are defending her has be gobsmacked.
I never thought I’d be saying that we should look to the Fortune 500 for moral guidance, but I guess that’s South Dakota.
Lt Colonel Mankiller’s real crime was bringing deserved shame on magats in South Duhkota and dragging them through more muck. In magatland you fall on your sword so as not to impugn the reps of the rest oi the rotten barrel of scumbags.
So, formula is poison for sure but if the staffer is unable to convince the seed planter to unclog the milk ducts and if the milk is infected with vaccine cooties why would JFM want to further contaminate an already-afflicted infant with more of Satan’s foetal stem cell-derived inoculation?
If the seed planter is obligated to pay for delivery how is unclogging stubborn milk ducts not mandatory?
Mr. H, it seems there are many in the twitters and that Mr. Haugaard wants to bring who will cast aspersions on the Staff Person of the Council. It seems the defense of JFM is to say that other people were naughtier. Drunker. Perhaps even insaner.
WWJFMD?
It seems, perhaps, she’d lie flat out about boobgate.
More than just curious, but what was the voter turnout in District 30 in the general?
The point is…..most professional job settings have a chain of command to follow when there is a conflict between two people. You wouldn’t want an employee to go directly to the owner of a company when they have a dispute with their shift manager. Here, this “unfortunate incident” was taken directly to the top and to the public.
From what I understand, this CAVE (citizen against virtually everything) was elected by people like her, and we can’t control what spews out of her mouth. Personally, I think she’s loony like all Trumpians, however she does deserve fair treatment.
Actually. CAH this might be a good week to have middle-school visitation. They might be able to take over and demonstrate normal leadership.
Frye-Mueller had no opponent in the 2024 general, but 9,598 District 30 voters bothered to mark her name on their ballots. That’s about 45% of the current District 30 registration, lower than the statewide turnout of just over 59%.
5,652 people voted in the District 30 Senate primary that decided the seat in June 2022. That’s about 70% of registered District 30 Republicans and about 27% of all registered voters in the district. Statewide turnout for the primary was 32%.