A lawyer representing state Sen. Kathleen Riebe said Monday that an investigation into Riebe’s alleged workplace discrimination and harassment creates a biased and distorted picture of what transpired — and called on incoming Senate leadership to trash it.

“In our experience, we have never seen an investigation report as one-sided, as biased, or as lacking in merit as this one,” Ryan McConnell, a former federal prosecutor representing Riebe, wrote in a letter to incoming Senate President Evan Vickers.

McConnell said the investigators hired by the Senate treated rumors, speculation and secondhand stories as proof, but dismissed any testimony from witnesses in Riebe’s favor.

“No professional investigator would sign this report,” McConnell said.

McConnell is asking Vickers scrap the report and reverse the punishment Senate President J. Stuart Adams imposed. Adams stripped Riebe, D-Cottonwood Heights, of access to Senate staff and interns, moved her to a more isolated office and required her to complete harassment training.

Additionally, McConnell is seeking an inquiry into why the findings and allegations — which he contends should have remained confidential — were made public before Riebe had seen a full copy of the report.

On election night last week, Riebe’s five fellow Democratic senators issued a joint statement stating that they had met and voted to expel Riebe from the caucus based on the investigation’s findings. They said she had “engaged in a pattern of conduct towards others that was likely motivated by race, national origin or ethnicity” and called on her to resign her seat.

Riebe has refused to step down and said Monday she would use the process to fight to retain the position and do the work her constituents sent her to do.

“I need my name cleared,” she said in an interview.

A spokesperson for the Senate said Friday evening that “to protect the confidentiality of those involved, the Senate will not comment on further specific details of the investigation.”

The 19-page investigative report, obtained Friday by The Salt Lake Tribune through an open records request, concluded that Riebe had violated Senate policy by making derogatory comments to a Senate staffer based on her race. It also said Riebe admitted that she had explicitly asked not to be assigned LGBTQ interns who “were coming out of the closet.”

Senator argues investigation twisted comments

Riebe said some of the findings were taken out of context and twisted to cast her in an unfair light.

In one instance, during a policy discussion with her colleagues, she questioned how many students were involved in a specific dual-language immersion program and if it was worth what the state was spending.

It happened to be the native language of the staffer who later filed the complaint against Riebe, who said she was engaging in a policy discussion, not personal attacks.

“That’s our constitutional right as policymakers, to speak about policy,” she said. “So to have words taken out of context and strip away all the background is not fair to anyone.”

With regard to the report’s finding that she had said she did not want staffers who were “coming out of the closet,” Riebe said she had engaged in a long conversation with staffers about past interns who had struggled with hearing statements from lawmakers and sitting through committee hearings on issues targeting their community.

“I think these kids come in here wanting to be a government intern and not realizing how hard it can be when we have conversations about [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], trans kids, sports with trans kids, bathroom bills,” she said. “Some of it gets really ugly. So it was kind of a flippant conversation where I said, ‘It’s not ideal.’ It’s not that I don’t want them. It’s just not ideal to be in that situation.”

During an intense legislative session, Riebe said, she also doesn’t have the bandwidth to give them the support they might need.

Her attorneys noted that the report didn’t find her comment influenced any decisions about intern assignments.

Investigation didn’t find support for retaliation claim

The letter also contends the complaint was made within days of Riebe telling other senators she intended to run against Senate Minority Leader Luz Escamilla. Riebe told the senators she was running because she felt Escamilla could not effectively lead the Democratic members while she was running for Salt Lake City mayor.

Riebe had also raised concerns about the Senate staffer who lodged the complaint allegedly focusing on running Escamilla’s campaign for mayor and keeping Escamilla in leadership, creating a conflict of interest. Riebe contends the complaint was retaliatory.

The investigation determined that “the evidence does not support the claim,” with a witness saying Escamilla had no campaign to run at the time.

In an interview Friday, Escamilla said she will run, but hasn’t filed with the city, hasn’t raised money and hasn’t hired staff, and won’t until after the upcoming legislative session is over.

“I’m still planning to run for Salt Lake City mayor ... but right now my focus is on the session. After March, it will change,” she said. “I haven’t hired anyone, but I will hire people and you betcha I’m trying to get the best people out there.”

Sen. Stephanie Pitcher, speaking on behalf of her fellow Democrats, said Friday that the group issued its statement on election night because they took the findings seriously, the public should hear about it and they did not want to appear to be withholding information from voters for political reasons.

The caucus members received a summary of the findings on the afternoon of Nov. 2 and were briefed by attorneys during a seven-hour meeting on Nov. 3, Election Day, where they discussed what action should be taken before issuing their statement that evening, she said.

“We were really concerned with what was in the report,” Pitcher said. “We decided as a caucus that we were not going to pay any deference to timing and if the investigation led to findings that we felt we needed to take action on we would just do it whenever it came to us.”

The senators did not receive the redacted copy of the report until Friday.

Riebe showed up at the Democratic leadership elections that evening and attempted to vote, but the caucus members refused to let her. She said she is a Democrat elected to the Senate by her constituents and her colleagues cannot strip her of that.

“To be honest, I don’t think they have the authority to kick me out of the Democratic caucus,” said Riebe, who plans to take up the issue with Utah Democratic Party leaders.

Editor’s note • Nov. 10, 9:40 a.m.: The story has been updated to reflect the correct timeline of when senators received a briefing on the report and the actual redacted report.