Reporter At MN Shooting Presser Asks Straight-Up Were Victims ‘Targeted Because They’re Democrats?’
One reporter asked officials at a press conference if Minnesota lawmakers State Sen. John Hoffman and Minnesota State Rep. Melissa Hortman. were targeted “because they’re Democrats?”
A shelter-in-place order went out early Saturday morning after the grim discovery that the two lawmakers and their spouses were shot overnight in their homes in separate attacks. The suspect — still at large as of this writing — reportedly may have been impersonating a law enforcement officer.
Governor Tim Walz (D-MN) led a live press conference Saturday morning with the first update following the shooting, and shared the sad news that Rep. Hortman was killed. He also confirmed the attacks were “politically-motivated” assassinations.
Police officials said they recovered a “manifesto,” but when asked if there’s an indication the victims were targeted “because they’re Democrats,” they hinted without being definitive:
REPORTER: These are two Democratic lawmakers. Is there anything else to suggest that this is politically motivated?
CHIEF MARK BRULEY: Again, I’m going to hold back most of the information. This is part of the investigation that we completed. This is rapidly evolving, just occurred a few hours ago and we’re trying to sort it out. We have partners from the FBI, the BCA, the M. County Sheriff’s Office, and almost every suburban agency in our community helping us with this. So it’s very complex and working on it.
But I will tell you, when we did a search of the vehicle, there was in it a manifesto that identified many lawmakers and other officials. We immediately made alerts to the state, who took action on alerting them and providing security where necessary. And that’s about, I’ll stop there.
UNIDENTIFIED: Chief, thank you very much. We’re going to take one more question.
REPORTER: Can I ask just, you used the word targeted, and that’s kind of along the lines of Michelle’s question in terms of politics, democrats, these are both Democratic lawmakers.
You said the word target, so targeted because they’re politicians or targeted because they’re Democrats?
BCA DREW EVANS: Well, so the question is, were they targeted? And when I use the term, why am I using the term?
As Chief Bruley noted, there was a list of individuals. And the individuals that were targeted in this situation were on that list.
And so when we’re looking at that, as Chief Bruley said, it’s far too early in the investigation to be able to provide information, but I do think we’ll be in a position where we’ll able to develop the motivation behind these attacks, and we’ll be able provide more information as this unfolds.
And so that’s part of the reason we’re using it, is I think there’s some preliminary information that is telling us kind of where this is headed, but we need a lot more work done by all the teams that are here working on that to be to provide that with you with a degree of accuracy.
REPORTER: Are you saying how many individuals were on the list?
BCA DREW EVANS: Quite a few.
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