Editorials & Other Articles

He left behind a letter and has all kinds of kooky explanations. I mean, if not for the fact that he's obviously gifted and talented and engaged in 5D chess, he'd just be condemned as loony.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/crime/2025/07/16/minnesota-lawmaker-shootings-hortman-hoffman-boelter-details/85235312007/

While Boelter didn't leave behind writings explaining his political beliefs, he did leave behind a letter in an abandoned car near his farm house. The car was left with a cowboy hat on the hood, Thompson said.

A handout photo posted by the Ramsey County Sheriff's Office shows Vance Luther Boelter, 57, the suspected gunman in the shooting deaths of a Minnesota Democratic state lawmaker and her husband, in custody. The photo was released on June 15, 2025.
The letter, addressed to Patel, includes a confession that Boelter is the man who shot the Hoffmans and Hortmans, Thompson said. In the letter, Boelter claimed he was trained by the U.S. military "off the books" and had been "approached" by Minnesota Gov. Tom Walz about killing other lawmakers, Thompson said. The letter also claimed that unnamed people "threatened to hurt his family if he didn't participate."

Thompson said the conspiracy theory was a fantasy.

Then there's Gizmodo's take--that he really was a genius, engaged in a plan to make sure that his family wasn't blamed and the "right people" (meaning 'left', in some obscure sense) were:

The letter is described as 1.5 pages long and “incoherent,” claiming that Boelter was secretly trained by the U.S. military “off the books.” The letter was found in Boelter’s car, according to the Star Tribune, and says that Walz wanted Klobuchar killed so that the governor could run for senate, something he’s expressed no desire to do. There’s no evidence anything in the letter is true, but that hasn’t stopped conspiracy theorists on X from insisting it’s evidence that Boelter is actually left wing. ...

Boelter’s apparent desire to be prepared for extremist scenarios shows up repeatedly in the unsealed court documents. A police search of Boelter’s car found “semi-automatic, assault-style rifles, as well as a large quantity of ammunition organized into loaded magazines,” along with wound treatment supplies and eye masks for sleeping.

Boelter, who harbored far-right extremist views on everything from abortion to LGBT rights, allegedly told his family about a “bailout plan” if anything happened, according to the Star Tribune, which his wife may have followed. Police used cellphone tracking to determine the location of Boelter’s wife later in the morning of June 14 and found her at 6:18 a.m., according to court documents. She was pulled over and consented to a search of her phone, which revealed that she and others in the family received a text that read, “Dad went to war last night… I don’t wanna say more because I don’t wanna implicate anybody.”

Boelter apparently told his family to leave their house because he was afraid police would come looking. Another text to his family read: “Words are not gonna explain how sorry I am for this situation… there’s gonna be some people coming to the house armed and trigger-happy and I don’t want you guys around.”

Police found two handguns in the car of Boelter’s wife along with about $10,000 in cash, according to the documents. Her passport and passports for her children were also in the car.

I guess the letter was the bailout plan. Or maybe it was the cash and guns and passports. (I haven't seen anything saying that said she knew or didn't know about the cash/guns/passports. Or the timing of the of his warning text. But nothing shouts 'innocence' like being on the lam with weapons, cash, and passports. Or maybe the text was the 'plan'? Dunno. Would be interesting to read the charging document and prosecutions briefs to see what their claims are.)

Sounds less right than blighted and less left than bereft of sanity, and more loon than goon.

Here, I've only seen claims that he might be right because he aimed left. But that kind of logic means Kirk's shooter must be left because he aimed right. I find ignorance to be a horrible place to build a theory.