Minnesota assassination suspect says he is a Republican who voted for Trump 3 times

Minnesota assassination suspect Vance Luther Boelter is a Republican who voted for Donald J. Trump in 2016, 2020, and 2024, he told Blaze News.

“I am a Trump supporter and voted for him in all 3 elections,” Boelter wrote to Blaze News from the Sherburne County Jail in Elk River, Minn., where he is being held awaiting federal trial. “I am a Republican.”

Boelter, 58, of Green Isle, Minn., is charged in state and federal courts with 14 counts for the brutal slayings of Minnesota House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman (DFL-Brooklyn Park), her husband, Mark Hortman, and the family dog, Gilbert. He is also charged with the attempted murder of state Sen. John Hoffman (DFL-Champlin), his wife, Yvette Hoffman, and their adult daughter, Hope Hoffman.

‘I didn’t want the press to use that to try and make attacks on Trump.’

Ever since authorities announced they were seeking to arrest Boelter hours after the shootings in suburban Minneapolis, battles have erupted online claiming Boelter is either a leftist or a Trump-supporting conservative. Conflicting evidence had not fully settled the issue either way by the time Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk was assassinated on Sept. 10 at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah.

After Kirk was shot to death just as he spoke to a college audience about transgender mass shooters, the finger-pointing about Boelter heated up again. The brutal murders of the Hortmans and the shooting of the Hoffmans were held up as a conservative example to counter the suspicion that Kirk was killed by a leftist.

Some conservative influencers and celebrities on X continue to describe Boelter as a Democrat. Melissa Tate wrote that Hortman “was assassinated by a DEMOCRAT who appointed to Governor’s Board by Tim Walz.” Others have said it’s a lie to describe Boelter as right-wing or a Trump supporter.

Boelter said he worried his political affiliation would be used against President Trump by the president’s enemies.

RELATED: Jenny Boelter files for divorce from Minnesota assassination suspect Vance Boelter

The public filed past the caskets of murdered Democratic House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman, her husband, Mark Hortman, and an urn with the remains of their slain dog at the Minnesota Capitol, June 27, 2025. Photo by Joshua Lott/Washington Post/Getty Images

“I tried to keep that to myself because I didn’t want the press to use that to try and make attacks on Trump because of me trying to make citizen arrests that went horribly wrong,” Boelter told Blaze News.

In earlier interviews with Alpha News and the New York Post, Boelter said the June 14 shootings had nothing to do with President Trump or with Boelter’s pro-life worldview.

Boelter claims he did not plan to shoot lawmakers in the overnight hours on June 14. He said his plan was to make citizen’s arrests based on a two-year undercover investigation of the sudden deaths of 400 Minnesotans who took COVID-19 shots.

‘For conservatives it doesn’t even occur to us to shoot someone simply for disagreeing.’

Prosecutors have not offered a theory on Boelter’s motives, but said his stories about citizen’s arrests and his earlier letter claiming Gov. Tim Walz ordered him to commit murders are nothing more than excuses for his brutal crimes.

Federal authorities allege Boelter had a plan to kill at least four Democrat state representatives on June 14: Hortman, Hoffman, Rep. Kristin Bahner (DFL-Maple Grove), and Sen. Ann Rest (DFL-New Hope). When Boelter allegedly visited the Bahner residence, she was not at home. Boelter was allegedly parked a block from Sen. Rest’s home but was apparently scared off when a New Hope police officer pulled up next to his vehicle.

Hennepin County Attorney Mary F. Moriarty said Boelter fired at least nine times into the door of the Hoffman home after he was shoved from the entrance by the senator and his wife. Senator Hoffman was hit nine times and Yvette Hoffman suffered eight bullet wounds, Moriarty said.

The FBI and Minnesota police say they found notebooks in Boelter’s vehicle and in a room he rented in north Minneapolis that contained a hit list of more than 60 Democrat officials and business locations. The names of Hortman and Hoffman were found in the notebooks, the FBI said.

While some conservatives still get it wrong about Boelter in the Hortman killings, others say there is a larger point in the ongoing debate about how divisive politics can fuel lopsided violence.

‘To the extent that the right cancels you, it will be for objectively abhorrent, perverse, and sick things.’

Virginia commonwealth lawmaker Nick Freitas, a Green Beret veteran with 363,000 followers on X, put it this way:

“Perhaps the reason leftists and conservatives think so differently about guns, is because for conservatives it doesn’t even occur to us to shoot someone simply for disagreeing,” Freitas wrote on X on Tuesday. “The response to Charlie’s assassination revealed that it occurs to the left all the time.”

RELATED: Assassination suspect Vance Boelter tells STUNNING inside story about shooting

Flowers sit on the desk of murdered Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman at the Minnesota Capitol on June 17, 2025. Photo by Joshua Lott/Washington Post/Getty Images

The gruesome killing of Kirk has set off an explosion of vitriol and hatred from the left. Thousands of X accounts celebrated his assassination, with some calling for the murder of more conservatives. Conservative podcasters and journalists are pushing back, exposing the worst of those dancing on Kirk’s grave and rejecting any comparisons to the left-induced “cancel culture.”

“There is a fundamental difference between the cancel culture that the left engages in and the quote-unquote canceling that the right is doing in the wake of Charlie’s assassination and the left’s celebration of it,” said podcaster and filmmaker Matt Walsh, who has 3.8 million X followers.

“The difference is the left will cancel you for saying objectively true, good, and normal things,” Walsh said in a video Sept. 15. “To the extent that the right cancels you, it'll be for saying objectively abhorrent, perverse, and sick things. And this distinction matters.”

Walsh said the left wants people fired for saying things like “men can’t have babies” and “women don’t have penises.” The attacks come for saying “the most basic and true things that it’s possible for a person to say.”

Walsh has called for the public shaming of those who celebrate Kirk’s murder or wish death on his wife and children. “We cannot have a civilized and decent society unless there are severe social consequences for people who publicly express sentiments like these,” he wrote. “These people are barbarians. Savages. And should be treated as such.”

A nurse at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta posted a shocking attack on Kirk’s family.

“F**k his kids. F**k his ancestors, especially the b***h who birthed him,” the nurse reportedly wrote on her @givethemkiki X account, which has since been deleted. After an uproar of complaints, the hospital fired the woman, stating, “This type of rhetoric is not acceptable for Children's employees and violates our social media policy."

“When you say ‘f**k his kids’ about a man who was just shot and killed on camera, you are not merely expressing an opinion,” Walsh wrote Sept. 14. “You are revealing that you are an animal, barely human, unfit for civilized society.”

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