As former Minnesota state House Speaker Melissa Hortman lay dead after being murdered inside her own home alongside her husband and dog and another state lawmaker, state Sen. John Hoffman, and his wife were fighting for their lives after being riddled with bullets by a gunman impersonating a police officer, Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno, Utah Sen. Mike Lee, billionaire Elon Musk and other prominent Republicans sought to lay the blame of the violence at the feet of Democrats and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

“This is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way,” Lee wrote on X on Sunday morning, alongside a picture of the alleged gunman in a hyper-realistic silicone mask and impersonating a police officer moments before authorities say he shot Hoffman, a Democrat, nine times and his wife Yvette eight times.

He fled as the pair’s daughter, who a relative said was shielded from the gunfire by her mother’s body, called 911 and alerted police. 

“Nightmare on Waltz street,” Lee later added, misspelling the governor’s name.

On Saturday, Lee had written that his guess was the assassin was not “MAGA,” or a supporter of President Donald Trump’s and that “Marxism kills,” sharing a post from a social media account accusing the American left of becoming “a full blown domestic terrorist organization.”


What You Need To Know

  • Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno, Utah Sen. Mike Lee, billionaire Elon Musk and other prominent Republicans sought to blame Democrats and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz for the shootings of two Democratic politicians and their spouses in Minnesota over the weekend
  • A man who lived with the alleged gunman, 58-year-old Vance Boelter, and described him as his “best friend” said he last spoke with Boelter on Friday and told CBS News that Boelter was a “Trump supporter” who listened to Infowars 
  • The suspect, Vance Boelter surrendered to police Sunday
  • While state and federal law enforcement officials have yet to publicly identify a specific motive, notebooks recovered by police had a list of Democratic lawmakers from Minnesota and neighboring states as well as abortion providers, according to acting U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson
  • U.S. Sen. Tina Smith, a Minnesota Democrat, told the New York Times she has been told she was on the gunman’s list. Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat, was also on the list, her office told Spectrum News=
  • Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar condemned Lee for his posts and said she planned to speak with him directly about it when she returns to Washington

A man who lived with the alleged gunman, 58-year-old Vance Boelter, and described him as his “best friend” said he last spoke with Boelter on Friday and told CBS News that Boelter was a “Trump supporter.”

The man, David Carlson, told reporters that Boelter listened to Infowars, a far-right media outlet run by arch-conspiracist Alex Jones, an avowed supporter of the president and someone who also spread baseless conspiracies about Boelter, his motives and his relationship with Walz in recent days.

“Everyone’s calling him a Democrat, he’s not a Democrat. He would be offended if people called him a Democrat,” Carlson told CBS News. “He didn’t like [Tim] Walz, he didn’t like [former Democratic President Joe] Biden.” 

The Associated Press reported that Boelter was a devout evangelical Chrisitian who went to Trump campaign rallies and preached at churches in the Democratic Republic of Congo in recent years. 

“The degree to which the extreme left has become radical, violent, and intolerant is both stunning and terrifying,” Moreno wrote in response to a photo shared by police of papers found in a vehicle believed to belong to the shooter that had “No Kings” written on them, an apparent reference to the nationwide anti-Trump protests over the weekend.

Many protests in Minnesota were cancelled and officials urged people not to attend in the state over fears they could be targets of the gunman who was still at large on Saturday.

“The far left is murderously violent,” wrote Musk, the world’s richest man and one of the Republican Party’s top donors last year. 

Boelter was captured by authorities on Sunday night after the shootings in the early morning hours on Saturday. While state and federal law enforcement officials have yet to publicly identify a specific motive, notebooks recovered by police included a list of names and documented “surveillance efforts” of his targets’ homes and family members.

Lawmakers from Minnesota and nearby states — all Democrats — as well as abortion providers, were on the list, according to acting U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson.

U.S. Sen. Tina Smith, a Minnesota Democrat, told the New York Times she has been told she was on the gunman’s list. Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat, was also on the list, her office told Spectrum News. Texas Rep. Veronica Escobar said she was also told she was on the list, as did Rep. Greg Landsman, D-Ohio. 

“Dad went to war last night… I don’t wanna say more because I don’t want to implicate anybody,” Boelter wrote in a text to his wife and other family members around 6:18 a.m. on Saturday morning, according to a federal criminal complaint. 

The FBI’s top official in Minnesota, Special Agent in Charge Alvin Winston, said at a Monday press briefing “this was a targeted attack against individuals who answered the call to public service.”

“Obviously, his primary motive was to go out and murder people. Now, they were all elected officials. They were all Democrats,” Thompson, the acting U.S. attorney in Minnesota and a longtime federal prosecutor, said at the Monday briefing. “Beyond that, I think it's just way too speculative for anyone that's reviewed these materials to know and to say what was motivating him in terms of ideology or specific issues.”

In a statement, Thompson called the shootings “targeted political assassinations the likes of which have never been seen in Minnesota” and “an attack on our state and on our democracy.” 

The evidence relied on by Lee and others on the U.S. right who sought to blame the murders and violence on Democrats appeared to be limited to Boelter’s prior voluntary role on a state government workforce development board with dozens of members. Boelter, who ran a private security contracting firm among other jobs, was initially appointed by Walz’s predecessor Gov. Mark Dayton in 2016 as a private sector representative, reappointed by Walz in 2019 and replaced in 2023. Walz’s office noted the governor is responsible for thousands of appointments of Minnesotas of all political affiliations to various boards and commissions.

Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar condemned Lee for his posts on MSNBC on Monday morning and said she planned to speak with him directly about it when she returns to Washington. The Democratic senator had dinner with Hortman hours before she was gunned down in her home. 

“This isn’t funny what happened here. This was an incredible woman, her husband, her two kids yesterday on Father’s Day — there was no Father’s Day for them, they lost both their parents,” Klobuchar said, her voice wavering. “This is not a laughing matter. And certainly what we’re seeing in increasing violence and this evil man who did this, this is not a joke.”

Early on Monday evening, Smith confronted Lee in the halls of the Senate, telling reporters afterwards that "honestly, he seemed a little surprised to be confronted."

“I wanted him to know how much pain that caused me and the other people in my state, and I think around the country, who think that this was a brutal attack,” she said. “I don't know whether Senator Lee thought fully through what it was, you have to ask him, but I needed him to hear from me directly what impact I think his cruel statement had on me, his colleague. I think too often in the Senate, we talk to one another through other people, and I wanted him to hear from me directly.”

Spectrum News' Charlotte Scott and Melody Kloepfer contributed to this report.