Several Minnesota Democratic lawmakers have condemned a social media post shared by President Donald Trump falsely suggesting that Gov. Tim Walz was behind the assassination House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman, his friend and colleague.
“Tonight, Donald Trump, who couldn’t be bothered to lower the flags to half staff or even say Melissa Hortman’s name until now, is spreading outrageous lies about her death. I cannot begin to explain the pain and anger that he is causing,” House DFL Leader Zack Stephenson, of Coon Rapids, said in a statement Saturday.
Trump’s Saturday post to his Truth Social site came as the Republican president has sought to politically damage Walz, who is running for a third term this year. The governor was the running mate of Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee defeated by Trump in 2024.
Walz is also being attacked by Trump over cases of fraud and alleged fraud in state social service programs during his tenure.
“Dangerous, depraved behavior from the sitting president of the United States. In covering for an actual serial killer, he is going to get more innocent people killed. America is better than this,” Walz himself wrote on X after Trump’s post.
“Trump is degrading the Office of the President by engaging in an outrageous lie,” said U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum, a Democrat who represents the St. Paul area.
“The man charged with killing Melissa and Mark Hortman, shooting John and Yvette Hoffman, and targeting dozens more Minnesota Democrats, was known to traffic in exactly the kind of conspiracy theory Donald Trump just endorsed,” Sen. Majority Leader Erin Murphy, DFL-St. Paul, said in a written statement. “Lying about the assassinations of the Hortmans puts people in danger and fans the flames of political violence.”
Hortman and her husband, Mark, were fatally shot in their Brooklyn Park home on June 14; their dog, Gilbert, also died of gunshot wounds.
Suspected assassin Vance Boelter, 58, of Green Isle, Minn., faces state and federal charges in their deaths and in the shootings of state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, and the attempted shooting of their daughter, Hope, at their Champlin home the same night.
While prosecutors have yet to specify any motives for the attacks, Stephenson, who was close friends with Hortman, said she was “murdered by a right-wing, anti-abortion extremist who believed conspiracy theories about COVID. Melissa Hortman and Tim Walz were friends and allies. Anyone who claims otherwise is lying.”
The conspiracy theories about Hortman’s death stem from Boelter’s confession letter, which a federal prosecutor in July said “seems designed to excuse his crimes.” The letter itself included Boelter’s conspiratorial claim that Walz ordered him to kill U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar so the governor could run for the U.S. Senate.
Other old conspiracy theories related to the June lawmaker attacks have resurfaced since national scrutiny of fraud investigations in state social service programs increased over the holidays.
For instance, one theory falsely claims that Hortman’s murder was motivated by her vote at the end of the 2025 legislative session to repeal MinnesotaCare health insurance for undocumented immigrant adults.
There is no evidence to suggest the assassination was motivated by that vote. Hortman did not vote for the repeal because she supported it — she and the House DFL were against the repeal. She agreed to be the lone Democratic “yes” vote as part of a state budget compromise with Republicans in the evenly divided House to keep the government operating.
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