A year later, lies about Melissa Hortman's murder continue to spread

MINNEAPOLIS — Just hours after Vance Boelter pleaded guilty to killing former House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, a conservative social media account with nearly 5 million followers suggested Gov. Tim Walz should be investigated.

Libs of TikTok was resurfacing a conspiracy theory — that Walz had somehow directed the attack — in posts last week that drew millions of views and a barrage of responses blaming the governor for the murder of one of his best friends and closest political allies.

It’s one of several false allegations that quickly spread after the murders last June, some pushed initially by conservatives with huge platforms, including Elon Musk and U.S. Sen. Mike Lee of Utah. But despite no evidence Walz was involved, facts contradicting the claim, and rejection by law enforcement, the falsehood has continued to this day. President Donald Trump elevated it in January.

It has created a noxious side effect to the political murders, forcing family members and local politicians who knew the Hortmans into the position of either enduring a tidal wave of internet misinformation about a personal tragedy or pushing back.

“It’s a revictimization of everyone who cared about Melissa over and over again,” said House DFL Leader Zack Stephenson, a DFLer, who was Hortman’s friend and political protege. “It’s maddening. The constant struggle, when you see examples of things like this, is do you try to rebut the false information or not? Because if you do, you also amplify.”

The lies showcase the broad reach of extremism and misinformation driven by social media in an age of intense national political polarization.

The conspiracy theories have also led to some hard feelings locally. Walz and other Democrats have at times lashed out against Republican colleagues who they believe have not done enough to dispel the baseless accusations, even if they’re not publicly embracing the conspiracies and have been broadly united in mourning the Hortman family.

A few Republicans in Minnesota have jumped in the fray to publicly reject the fringe theories popping up online.

Sen. Julia Coleman, a Republican who also worked with Charlie Kirk before he was assassinated, watched falsehoods spread about his murder in liberal and conservative circles.

“I guess it’s different when you see conspiracy theories online and you know the people and their families versus somebody that is an obscure person you’ve only seen on the internet,” Coleman said.

After Boelter killed the Hortmans and injured Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, a torrent of conspiracy theories followed.

One was that Walz ordered Boelter to go on a shooting spree of lawmakers, an allegation Boelter initially made himself, for retribution or other political ends. Law enforcement have no evidence to support this.

Some point to Hortman as the lone House Democrat to vote for stripping state health coverage from adult undocumented immigrants. Yet the idea that Hortman broke with the party on immigration and then faced punishment is also false.

In reality, Hortman, Walz and Senate DFL leaders struck a broader deal to pass a state budget with Republicans in a tied Minnesota House. Ending that health coverage was a concession by Democrats that some DFLers protested. But Hortman voted for the policy in order to pass the agreement, not because she supported the healthcare rollback.

“She was heartbroken to vote for that bill,” Stephenson said.

That conspiracy theory, and others without evidence, emerged in the hours after the shootings, when information was scarce.

Yet more than six months after Hortman and her husband were murdered, Trump republished a video on social media that falsely suggested Walz had directed the killing to cover up fraud.

After Trump published his video, Melissa and Mark Hortman’s two children released a statement calling Trump’s message a painful twisting of the facts and asked him to take it down. The White House did not respond to a request for comment this week.

Now a year after the killings, the same type of claims periodically crop up online, from accounts with millions of followers like Libs of Tik Tok, conservative commentator Benny Johnson or actor Rob Schneider.

During his plea hearing, Boelter was asked if he planned and carried out the attacks alone. He said yes.

Stephenson said he and the Hortman family have wrestled with how to address the falsehoods. He said in a “hyperpartisan era,” many people will discount what he’s saying because he’s a Democrat.

“To some extent you feel a bit like you’re in a Catch-22,” Stephenson said. “If you say nothing you’re letting this fester and grow, but if you say something you might actually be feeding it.”

Stephenson said he has focused on people in his local political orbit, reaching out privately to those who he believes have spread or amplified the conspiracy.

One instance came in January, during a hearing of the U.S. House Oversight Committee focused on fraud in Minnesota government. A congresswoman asked a panel of Minnesota Republican state legislators whether it was appropriate for Trump to share the conspiracy video.

In response, GOP state Rep. Kristin Robbins said Boelter had written a letter alleging Walz ordered him to carry out the attacks. She added: “I know the facts will come out in the case and we need to be respectful of the Hortman family, and we need to let this play out in the courts.”

In the wake of the killings in 2025, Robbins posted on social media that claiming Walz was at fault “is wrong and increases division and hate.”

Still, Walz told The Minnesota Star Tribune last week that he felt Robbins’ response was “pretty dangerous stuff.”

In an interview Tuesday, Robbins said she was surprised by the question in a fraud hearing and “inartfully” was trying to say the hearing wasn’t supposed to be about the Hortman family. Robbins said she has reached out to her colleagues to make amends.

“I did not say as strongly as I wish I would have, that these conspiracy theories are not only not true but they are hurting Melissa’s kids, particularly,” Robbins said.

Nevertheless, the episode illustrates how legislators are still grappling with how to handle the conspiracies and how the subject is particularly painful for legislators who work closely and knew the Hortmans.

More broadly, Walz spokesman Teddy Tschann said it’s disturbing to see how many people believe Boelter’s account of the killings — what he called “the deranged thoughts of a mass murderer” — rather than local law enforcement.

Tschann said he believes Boelter was himself radicalized by conspiracy theories, and the spread of new ones could contribute to other violence.

“Not only did we fail to learn from this tragedy, but the response has allowed the underlying problem to metastasize,” he said.

Stephenson said he believes there are some conservatives who are deliberately spreading the false conspiracies for political effect. He called it a “vivid example of the worst aspects of our politics today.”

A handful of current and former state Republican lawmakers have publicly dispelled the false allegations. That includes former Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka, who negotiated budget deals with Hortman and Walz when he served in the Legislature.

Coleman said she decided to speak out on social media and elsewhere after Walz held an event after the assassinations.

“You could just see how much he was hurting from the loss of Speaker Hortman, and that he had truly lost a friend,” she said. “While I don’t agree with the governor on most things, we can agree she was a good person — and that he’s not the type of person that would go out and do something that awful and terrible.”

As a Republican, Coleman should theoretically be a more trustworthy messenger to some on the political right. Still, she said the reception is not always warm.

“The responses have been a mixture of, ‘Thank you for speaking up’ or, ‘You must be in on it too,’” Coleman said. “It just shows that people are going to believe what they want to believe, but there’s still a segment of the population out there craving common sense and sanity.”

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(Staff writer Ryan Faircloth contributed to this story.)

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