A Republican state lawmaker who was arrested last week in Michigan claims he was set up—but provided no evidence as to the alleged effort to orchestrate his downfall, nor the shadowy figures supposedly behind the conspiracy.
Details surrounding state Rep. Neil Friske’s arrest in Lansing in the early hours of Thursday morning remained hazy nearly a week later. Police responding to reports of possible shots fired took him into custody around 2:45 a.m., with a police spokesperson saying he was suspected of “a felony-level offense.”
The Michigan Information and Research Service, a local independent news outlet, cited anonymous sources in reporting that the incident had allegedly involved Friske chasing an adult dancer after a disagreement while brandishing a gun.
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Records obtained by the Detroit Free Press show Lansing police requested charges of sexual assault, assault, and a weapons-related offense against Friske. He was released without charge on Friday morning, however, with an investigation into the matter ongoing. A heavily redacted police report shows that investigators are looking into potential first-degree criminal sexual conduct, the state’s most serious sexual assault charge.
Friske protested his innocence in a Monday appearance on a conservative radio show, insinuating he’d been made a patsy.
“Just the way events unfolded, it was very clear to me that something wasn’t right and I was being framed, and trying to be framed, and being set up,” he said on Your Defending Fathers, adding that he couldn’t get into “the specifics of things.”
“That’s how people work. It’s so frustrating. It’s amazing to me how desperate people are, that they would go to these lengths to try to destroy someone.”
At a candidate forum in the city of Petoskey that same day, Friske said he’d done “absolutely nothing wrong,” according to NPR affiliate WKAR.
“And I’m sure when the police are done conducting their investigation, I will be completely exonerated,” he insisted. “So far this has not been a miscarriage of justice, it has been a miscarriage of the media.”
Friske, who is seeking his second term in the Michigan House, also previously pointed to the timing of the arrest as fishy. On Thursday, his campaign claimed in a statement that it was “highly suspect” that he’d been arrested just “before absentee ballots are released” and the day “after an unknown phone number conducted polling on the 107[th District] race between Rep. Friske and our opponent with deep-state ties.”
It was not immediately clear whether “our opponent” referred to Friske’s Republican primary challenger, a small business owner named Parker Fairbairn, or the Democrat one of them will likely face off against in the general election, Jodi Decker.
In a statement on Friday, Fairbairn said that Friske deserves “the presumption of innocence until proven guilty” but called his rival’s voting record “abysmal and immoral.”
Fairbairn added, “Neil deserves his time in court, and the people of the 107th deserve better than Neil.”
The campaign’s statement offered little clarity on the allegations Friske faces, but noted, “As many of us know, Rep Friske is always exercising his 2nd Amendment right.”
Friske (pronounced “Frisk-ee,” according to the Free Press) was elected in 2022, defeating Decker with just over 56 percent of the vote. He is a member of the Michigan House Freedom Caucus, a contingent in the Democrat-led chamber that styles itself as “focused on traditional conservative values and individual liberty.”
The Republican primaries in Michigan are set to take place on Aug. 6.
