In an email to Lee’s office, Smith’s chief of staff Ed Shelleby slammed the GOP senator for making light of the matter.

“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,” he wrote.

“So you’ll forgive my candor as I speak through enormous grief,” Shelleby added. "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 a US Senator to post not just one but a series of jokes about an assassination — is that a successful day of work on Team Lee? Did you come into the office Monday and feel proud of the work you did over the weekend?

“I pray to God that none of you ever go through anything like this," Shelleby added. "I pray that Senator Lee and your office begin to see the people you work with in this building as colleagues and human beings.”

He continued: “And I pray that if God forbid, you ever find yourselves having to deal with anything similar, you find yourselves on the receiving end of the kind of grace and compassion that Senator Mike Lee could not muster.”

Shelleby’s letter has gone viral on social media where journalists and commentators are praising him for confronting the senator over his controversial remarks following Sunday’s incident.

“Just re-read this. As a Hill staffer, it’s especially gut-wrenching to read Senator Smith’s staffer appeal to the humanity of another colleague in Senator Mike Lee’s office following Lee’s heartless comments over the weekend following the horrific violence in MN,” wrote Robert Julien, a staffer for Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX) on the social platform X.

Writer Pam Fessler said: “Good for this staffer. There’s no place in our political discourse for Lee’s despicable posts.”

“Read this. And then think of the cruelty and lack of humanity from Mike Lee,” said Democratic activist Rebecca Katz.