An aide to former Public Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz alleges in a new lawsuit that her boss brushed off allegations that the agency’s top lawyer was being physically and verbally abusive.

After directly airing the allegations with Franz, the woman alleges she was retaliated against, frozen out of travel and important meetings.

The accusations, which Franz denies as false, are spelled out in a lawsuit filed in King County Superior Court by Bailey Boyd, who was hired in 2023 as Franz’s deputy director of external relations at the Department of Natural Resources.

Boyd soon began dating Daniel Teimouri, then the agency’s general counsel. After a few months, the relationship turned physically and emotionally abusive, Boyd’s lawsuit says, with Teimouri hitting and strangling her and threa

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