Officers found notebooks referencing at least 45 state and federal elected officials in the car of suspected Minnesota shooter Vance Boelter, according to Joseph Thompson, the acting U.S. attorney for the District of Minnesota.
The names included “dozens and dozens” of Democratic lawmakers, Thompson said during a Monday press briefing. “There were some abortion rights supporters, I believe, on the list,” he added.
Several prominent Minnesota politicians, including U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D) and Tina Smith (D), as well as Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison confirmed to The New York Times that they had been mentioned in the writings. According to the Times and Axios, Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar, Kelly Morrison and Angie Craig were among the Minnesota politicians who were also listed, while other Democrats, including Sen. Tammy Baldwin (Wis.), and Reps. Debbie Dingell (Mich.), Hillary Scholten (Mich.), Joyce Beatty (Ohio), Marcy Kaptur (Ohio), Greg Landsman (Ohio), Shri Thanedar (Mich.) and Veronica Escobar (Texas) were referenced as well.
As Smith told the Times, abortion providers in Minnesota were included in the writings, too.
Both CNN and The New York Times have described the documents as an apparent list of potential targets, citing information from law enforcement officials. As Thanedar told The Detroit News, the FBI has signaled that some of the names may have been mentioned in notes that they didn’t think were a “hit list but a rambling of a conspiracy,” he said.
Thompson and other officials stated they hadn’t found a traditional manifesto as part of the writings and that the names were scattered across sheafs of notes. As a result, they said, they didn’t yet have a total number of people who were referenced because certain lawmakers were mentioned repeatedly in different documents. Both the CNN and Times estimated the number around 70 people.
“I do want to continue to clarify, this is not a list of people that was in a numerical order and some sort of ranking. These are names that are being developed as we are looking at this across multiple writings,” Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Superintendent Drew Evans said in the briefing.
Thompson noted the main information they have at this point is that the suspect visited the homes of “no less than four elected officials” and that “he had a list of other officials, their home addresses.”
He said documents showed the suspect had done extensive research including surveilling lawmakers’ homes and investigating their family members.
“He had many, many notebooks full of plans, lists of names, surveillance, efforts he took to surveil and locate the home addresses and family members,” Thompson said.
Given the information authorities currently have, however, it is too early to disclose a motive, Thompson said.
Boelter was captured by law enforcement Sunday night and is a suspect in the killing of state Rep. Melissa Hortman (D) and her husband, Mark Hortman, and in the shooting of state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette Hoffman.
These attacks have raised concerns about the prevalence of political violence, with several lawmakers mentioned on the list beefing up their security or canceling events this week.
“After being made aware that my name was on a list connected to the recent tragic shooting in Minnesota, my office has made the difficult decision to postpone our planned town hall in Muskegon,” Scholten said in a Monday statement, adding that she is focused on preserving law enforcement resources.
“I never thought I’d have to spend the weekend holed up in my basement wearing a panic button with law enforcement stationed outside my home and my name on a list for targeted assassination,” Morrison told HuffPost in a statement. “We cannot live in a country where our elected representatives need security detail simply to survive.”
Planned Parenthood told Mother Jones it’s coordinating “with local law enforcement to increase patrols at all of our facilities” as it works to keep clinics open.