As Vance Boelter heads to prison, where’s the accountability for GOP conspiracy theorists?
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.
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Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
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