The Minnesota man accused of fatally shooting the former speaker from the State Chamber in what the authorities have described as a politically motivated murder said that the state governor wanted him to kill two US senators, authorities said on Tuesday.
Vance Boelter, 57, made the statements in a letter to the director of the FBI Kash Patel that was found in Boelter’s car after the shootings last month in two households of legislators, said the interim lawyer of the United States Joseph Thompson, who called the letter starts from an apparent effort of Boelter to excuse his crimes.
Thompson said there was no evidence that Boelter pointed to the two US senators of Minnesota, Amy Klobuchar or Tina Smith, both Democrats. A spokesman for Governor Tim Walz did not immediately respond to a request for comments.
Thompson said that the letter, which also included statements that Boelter had carried out missions for the military in Asia, the Middle East and Africa, would be made public in an unusual search warrant.
The dissemination occurred after a federal grand jury accused Boelter for six charges of harassment, murder by using a firearm and other charges in the shootings of two state legislators and their spouses, Thompson said.
It is not clear if the federal authorities will look for the death penalty, he said.
Boelter’s lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comments.
It will be prosecuted in the accusation of six positions in September and will be scheduled to face the trial in November.
Boelter was accused of killing the state representative Democrat Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, at her home in Brooklyn Park on June 14 while passing through an agent of the law.
He is accused of shooting and wounding the state of democratic senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette Hoffman, at his home near the same day. Both have been discharged from the hospital.
Thompson said Tuesday that Boelter also tried to kill the couple’s daughter, Hope.
“Both John and Yvette acted with an incredible courage to get between Boelters and his daughter,” he said. “Miraculously, Hope was not shot, but she was the fifth victim.”
In a statement, Hope Hoffman said that, although it was not injured in the shots, “now it will coexist forever with the PTSD to see my parents almost dead in front of me and see my life stand out before my eyes with a gun in my face.”
“How they didn’t walk me is a silly luck,” he added. “I am grateful to have been at my parents’ house to call 911. If I hadn’t been, they wouldn’t be here. My parents saved me and saved each other.”
After a human hunt, Boelter was found two days after the shootings that crawled into a field in a rural part of the state. He declared himself innocent of multiple state positions of second degree intentional murder and attempted murder.
The authorities have said that he left a notebook with a list of politicians of his native state, including Hortman and Hoffman, as well as legislators in Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Nebraska and Iowa.
During a judicial hearing this month, Boelter resigned from his rights to the probable cause and preliminary hearings and said that “he expected the truth and the facts about 14 to come to the public.”
“When giving up these two things, that leads us to that faster, where the truth can come out,” he said.
