No trial set yet for accused assassin charged in Minnesota lawmaker shootings as defense reviews large amount of evidence
There is not a trial date set yet for the man accused of killing a top Minnesota House Democrat and her husband as the defense reviews thousands of documents and recordings prosecutors turned over related to the June shooting attacks.
Vance Boelter, 58, faces six federal charges for allegedly killing former DFL House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, and wounding DFL state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife Yvette at their homes on June 14. He pleaded not guilty.
At a status conference hearing Wednesday, Boelter's federal defender Manny Atwal said the defense received 130,000 pages of documents, over 800 hours of video and audio recordings and 2,000 photos from prosecutors, which has taken 110 hours just to download and is still in process.
"That's not unusual for a complex case, but it is a lot of information for us to review," she told the court.
Magistrate Judge Dulce Foster extended the deadline for defense pretrial motions from January to May after Atwal said the earlier deadline would be hard to meet due to the sheer volume of evidence to review.
Foster also asked prosecutors if the government would be seeking the death penalty in this case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Harry Jacobs said there is not a timeline yet on when that would be determined.
His office can make recommendations, but the final decision rests solely with the U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi.
"We're giving it the care and concern it needs," Jacobs said.
Foster scheduled another status conference for Feb. 12 and asked for updates on the death penalty as soon as they are available.
Investigators said Boelter was impersonating a police officer and had a hit list that included the names of other Democratic officials the night he shot and killed the Hortmans and wounded the Hoffmans. He also visited the homes of two other DFL lawmakers the night of the attacks, police said, before he was arrested after a two-day manhunt that authorities called the largest in Minnesota history.
Friends described Boelter as an evangelical Christian who supported President Trump. But prosecutors said earlier this year his motives are unclear. Then-acting U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson described a letter Boelter addressed to FBI director Kash Patel, insisting he was "approached" by Gov. Tim Walz to kill U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, and was trained "off the books" for the U.S. military, among other claims.
Thompson said the note "certainly seems designed to excuse his crimes."
Separately, the International Association of Chiefs of Police is conducting an after-action review of the 43-hour period that started with Hope Hoffman's 911 call alerting authorities her parents had been shot by a person impersonating a police officer and ended with Boelter's arrest.
The report, which will be made public upon completion, will evaluate law enforcement's response during that time and is commissioned by the Brooklyn Park, New Hope and Champlin police departments, as well as the Minnesota Department of Public Safety and the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office.
It's expected to take six months and will cost nearly $430,000 split between those agencies.