How the ‘politically motivated’ shooting of Minnesota lawmakers unleashed right-wing conspiracy theories
Police in Minnesota are grappling with two different chases.
The first, most pressing one, is the arrest of Vance L. Boelter, the man suspected of impersonating a police officer and shooting two state lawmakers and their spouses in a “politically motivated” attack on Saturday.
The other is a race to get in front of feverish conspiracy theories about the incident that are spreading across right-wing corners of the internet.
It didn’t take long for the conjecture to begin after the fatal shootings of state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, as well as the non-fatal shootings of state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, hit the headlines.
In regards to Hortman, right-wing conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich wondered aloud on X, “Did [Minnesota Governor] Tim Walz have her executed to send a message?”
Fellow fabulist Alex Jones, meanwhile, used a Saturday broadcast to make a variety of unfounded implications, including that Hortman was killed because she was considering switching parties and joining Republicans, and that suspect Boelter was a “high-level” Walz appointee and “No Kings” protest organizer.
Jones capped off the a misinformation session by reading from a social media post from a seemingly random, pseudonymous account that called the shooting a “professional hit.”
Such claims reached thousands of people, even as they defied common sense and all evidence that eventually became available about the shootings.
Walz was in fact good friends with Hortman.
Boelter was not a high-level ally of the governor, but rather a re-upped appointee from a previous administration on an obscure workforce board with about 60 members.
Hortman was not planning on switching parties, though she did help broker a controversial compromise with Republicans this year to scale back undocumented immigrants’ access to a state health program in order to keep the government open.
Further eroding the narrative of the shooting as a Democratic plot against Hortman, Hoffman, the other targeted lawmaker, voted on the opposite side of the immigration issue.
Evidence found in Boelter’s vehicle reportedly contained a hit list of prominent state Democrats and abortion rights supporters. State officials were worried about safety threats to the protests after finding papers marked “No Kings,” rather than the alleged gunman being a protest leader.
The man’s roommate also described him as a Trump voter.
