Boelter set to change plea in Minnesota lawmaker shootings case
Boelter's plea change could sidestep a trial in the Minnesota lawmaker shootings case, after the Justice Department dropped its push for death.
Vance Boelter changed his plea Thursday in Minneapolis, a turn that could move one of Minnesota’s most closely watched federal cases out of trial and toward sentencing. The hearing began around 10 a.m. before U.S. District Judge John Tunheim.
Boelter is charged in the June 14, 2025 attacks that killed House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman, and wounded state Sen. John Hoffman, his wife, Yvette, and their daughter, Hope Hoffman. Federal prosecutors said Boelter disguised himself as a law enforcement officer, carried firearms and body armor, and traveled to lawmakers’ homes in what they described as a calculated plan to intimidate and murder elected officials.
The federal case has moved in stages since prosecutors first charged Boelter in June 2025 and then indicted him on six federal counts on July 15, 2025. Those charges cover stalking, murder and attempted murder, and prosecutors have described the attacks as targeted political assassinations, placing the case among the most serious federal prosecutions in the state’s history. The manhunt that followed was described by authorities as the largest in Minnesota history.
The plea change came after the Justice Department said it would not seek the death penalty. Court filings tied that decision to a proposed plea agreement, signaling that the most severe sentencing path had already been taken off the table before Boelter entered court. If the plea stands, the case would avoid a jury trial, and the focus would shift to sentencing and the factual record that becomes public through the plea process.
The shooting case has continued to reverberate through Minnesota government because it exposed how quickly political violence can collide with public security. Officials also rejected online claims that Boelter had close ties to Gov. Tim Walz, saying Walz reappointed him in 2019 to a bipartisan workforce development advisory board but did not know him personally. For state officials and the public alike, the plea change narrows the path to resolution, but it does not diminish the scale of the violence that shook the Capitol, the Legislature and communities far beyond St. Paul.
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