Vance Boelter returns to court for state murder case as his posts online fuel fight over evidence

Jeff Day, The Minnesota Star Tribune on Sep 2, 2026

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MINNEAPOLIS — Convicted political assassin Vance Boelter will appear in Hennepin County District Court on Wednesday for a second court hearing on multiple counts of first-degree murder for his violent, deadly rampage against Minnesota Democrats last year.

Although Boelter pleaded guilty in federal court and was sentenced to life in prison for killing Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and shooting Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, he still has several outstanding charges in Hennepin County. Those include several counts of first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder, along with an animal cruelty charge for shooting the Hortmans’ dog, Gilbert, who was later euthanized. That court process is separate from the federal case.

His defense attorneys have noted they will press forward a legal argument that Boelter’s killing of the Hortmans was a justifiable taking of life because he was “effecting a lawful arrest.”

On top of legal filings between prosecutors and defense attorneys that show how contentious his state court case could be, Boelter has also been writing expansively on the online publishing platform Substack in recent weeks.

While several of the posts are about religion, abortion, suicide and Africa, a recent post was titled, “What are they hiding.”

In it, Boelter made allegations about how his state and federal prosecution has been handled, including that former acting U.S. Attorney for Minnesota Joe Thompson rushed charges to pursue a failed death penalty case; that Boelter was held in solitary confinement for a year to limit facts from getting out; and that his case has been delayed to protect Democrats in Midterm elections.

In a filing on Tuesday, prosecutors for the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office noted that they had been monitoring Boelter’s communications and “are aware that these posts are, indeed, personally authored by [Boelter] and transcribed to Substack by his close friend.”

The hearing on Wednesday will also focus on how a massive amount of evidence will be handled after Hennepin County prosecutors Paige Starkey and Krista White asked Judge Juan Hoyos to issue a protective order restricting how evidence could be handled by Boelter and his public defenders, Bryan Leary and Raissa Carpenter.

Prosecutors requested that Boelter only be allowed to view evidence when one of his attorneys is present.

Leary and Carpenter responded that because of jail restrictions on visitations and the hundreds of hours of material that needs to be reviewed, that protective order would be restrictive and “limits the time that Mr. Boelter can spend reviewing the evidence in his case, increases the amount of money that taxpayers are spending on this case, and will create delays.”

Starkey and White countered in their filing that Boelter’s posts on Substack showed he is “eager for public attention for his delusional narrative of attempting a ‘citizen’s arrest’ of the victims and other baseless claims.”

“Given the opportunity to access and possess discovery materials outside the presence of his attorneys or their staff, there is every reason to believe Mr. Boelter will do exactly as he wishes and ‘share’ the evidence publicly, resulting in extreme prejudice to both parties, the victims, and the administration of justice,” they wrote.

The murder of the Hortmans and the attempted murder of the Hoffmans and their daughter, Hope, rocked the state of Minnesota and led to state and federal charges against Boelter.

While Boelter’s appearances in federal court were largely subdued, at his first appearance in state court last month, Boelter made several requests of the court, including that Sen. Amy Klobuchar testify about whether or not she knew him.

In another attempt to draw parallels between Boelter and Minnesota’s political apparatus, his public defenders included a photo of Boelter with Rep. Angie Craig in a recent filing and noted that Boelter “was appointed by Governor [Mark] Dayton and by Governor [Tim] Walz to The Governor’s Workforce Development Board.”

Meanwhile, prosecutors reiterated in their filing: “Court is not left to speculate about Defendant’s indiscriminate desire for attention; Defendant has expressed it clearly and repeatedly.”

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