Well, I am holding in my hands tonight a letter unlike any I have ever read, a letter that I could

never have imagined being written by anyone working in the United States Senate to anyone else

working in the United States Senate. And we just got this. Just got a copy of this.

And so I am departing from what were my prepared remarks at this moment to insert this into the show. And the reason this letter exists and is such a shock to me based on my own experience of working in the Senate is that no one like Mike Lee was working in the United

States Senate when I worked there. And Mike Lee disgraced himself this weekend and through guilt

by association disgraced every member of his Senate staff with conduct the Senate has never seen before.

The Senate has a phrase, point of personal privilege.

It is the phrase a senator uses sometimes to ask to speak out of turn in order to say something of the utmost importance to that senator personally.

And I want to give that privilege right here, right now,

to Ed Schellaby, who is the deputy chief of staff to Minnesota Senator Tina Smith.

Ed Shellebe wrote this letter to the staff of Utah's Republican Senator Mike Lee,

after Mike Lee decided to make jokes on social media about the assassination of Minnesota

Democratic State Representative Melissa Horton and her husband.

Ed Shellaby's letter to Mike Lee's Senate staff. of Melissa Hortman and her husband.

Ed Shelby's letter to Mike Lee's Senate staff says, in part, 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. 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 U.S. Senator, to post not just one,

but a series of jokes about an assassination?

...