About a year ago, a gunman tried to kill state Democratic Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, at their Minnesota home. They suffered serious injuries but survived the attack. Tragically, however, they were not the only victims: The same gunman, on the same evening, shot and killed Democratic state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, at their nearby home.
After a two-day manhunt, the murderer, Vance Boelter, was found armed and crawling in a field in a sparsely populated stretch of Minnesota.
Thirteen months later, Boelter was convicted and sentenced. MS NOW reported:
The man who pleaded guilty to the murders of top Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman, at their Minneapolis-area home in June 2025 was sentenced to life in prison Thursday.
Vance Boelter, 59, was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences plus 40 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to six federal charges related to what prosecutors said were politically motivated attacks last year.
There’s no great mystery as to Boelter’s political motivations. The Justice Department’s own sentencing memo noted that the shooter “texted his friends articles about the Republican U.S. House majority being ‘in Danger,’ commenting that ‘Democrats steal enough elections to tip the balance of power.’”
My hope is that the murderer’s name will soon be forgotten, while his victims remain remembered, but as he lives out his days in a prison cell, it’s hard not to wonder about the lack of accountability for prominent Republican officials who peddled disgusting conspiracy theories about the slayings.
For example, shortly after the Hortmans were killed, Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio wrote online that the anti-abortion Trump voter reflected “the degree to which the extreme left has become radical, violent, and intolerant.” Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah went considerably further, firing off a series of ugly messages via social media in which he mocked the deadly violence and accused the shooter of being a Marxist.
In a separate online item, Lee showed a photo of the alleged shooter in a mask, alongside the senator’s message that read, “Nightmare on Waltz Street,” in apparent reference to Democratic Gov. Tim Walz. The Utahn then pinned one of his posts — which read, “This is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way,” referring to the deadly shootings — to the top of his feed for special emphasis.
Months later, President Donald Trump personally amplified an insane conspiracy theory about Hortman and the motivation behind the shooting that took her life.
Even at the time, these statements were indefensible. As Boelter disappears into a cell, they’re worse.
The broader question appears obvious: Will any of the Republicans who tried to exploit the Minnesota shootings express even the slightest regret for what they said and did?
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