Mention of a “manifesto” in the first press conference about the Minnesota gunman’s attack on four people has caused a mass mix-up. As law enforcement continued their investigation, the buzzword caused a social media commotion.
“Manifesto,” “list” or “writings”? Officials have used each term, leading some to allege the changing terminology shows an effort to conceal the shooter’s motivation.
“Minnesota officials have once again REFUSED to release assassin Vance Boelter’s manifesto, saying there’s not enough ‘there,’” said a June 15 X post with more than 900,000 views, “THEN JUST RELEASE IT! Let the PEOPLE decide!”
The suspect, Vance Luther Boelter, 57, faces charges for assassinating state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife Yvette in their home early June 14, before shooting and killing state Rep. Melissa Hortman, a former Democratic speaker, and her husband Mark in their home a few miles away.
Officials describe the two killings as a part of a larger plan to inflict more carnage on lawmakers and officials.
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Acting U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson said June 16 that officials found a list of dozens of Minnesota state and federal elected officials in a fake police vehicle left at the crime scene. “No Kings” flyers were also found in the vehicle, shown in a Minnesota State Patrol photo.
In a June 14 press briefingBrooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley was the first to utter the m-word.
“When we did a search of the vehicle, there was a manifesto that identified many lawmakers and other officials,” he said.
Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Superintendent Drew Evans took the lectern after Bruley, referring to the evidence as a “list.”
“As chief noted, there was a list of individuals,” Evans said. “The individuals that were targeted in this situation were on that list.”
There’s a difference between the two words.
“Manifestos are explicit statements about motive,” said Adam Lankford, chair of the University of Alabama’s Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice.
Media outlets folded “manifesto” into their reporting, quoting Bruley.
A search of Nexis news archives found earliest mentions of the word appeared in a June 14 article published by the Chicago-based media outlet The Center Square.
PolitiFact reached out to the reporter, J.D. Davidson, about his choice of words.
“(Manifesto) was stated by officials at the very first news conference. It has since been clarified and we now refer to it as writings,” Davidson told PolitiFact in an email.
During a June 16 press conferenceacting U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson rejected the “speculation” about a manifesto. He said the suspect’s notebooks contained a list of lawmakers but not ideological writings.
Acting U.S. Attorney Joseph H. Thompson speaks during a news conference at the United States Courthouse in Minneapolis, Monday, June 16, 2025. (AP)
This backpedaling of terminology launched more conspiratory theories on social media. “Officials first said the Minnesota shooter had a manifesto — now they’re saying there isn’t one. So which is it?” posted one X user on June 16. These unsupported theories have spanned from assuming the assassin’s ideology to saying that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz could be writing it himself.
“I’ve seen nothing like a Unabomber-style manifesto in (Boelter’s) writings,” Thompson said on June 16. “He had many, many notebooks full of plans, lists of names, surveillance, efforts that he took to surveil and locate the home addresses and family members’ relationships with these elected officials, but I have not seen anything involving some sort of political screed or manifesto that would clearly identify what motivated him.”
The Unabomber manifesto was a 35,000-word anti-technology document submitted to The Washington Post and The New York Times by the serial mail bomber, Ted Kaczynski, in 1995.
Usually, Lankford said, a manifesto requires two main ingredients: some explanation of the motive and some discussion of social, political or ideological issues the perpetrator considered justification for violence.
Since neither a pile of “No Kings” papers nor a list of elected officials explain the perpetrator’s perceived justification of violence, they wouldn’t count as a manifesto, Lankford told PolitiFact.
“Even if the list was labeled ‘kill list,’ that wouldn’t explain why he was motivated to kill them, only whom he considered his enemies. We would have to rely on our own interpretation,” he said.
Lawmakers have not yet released a motive. Bruley and Evans did not respond to PolitiFact. When asked for comment, a Minnesota Department of Public Safety spokesperson directed PolitiFact to news conferences on the department’s YouTube channel in which officials addressed the verbiage.
“If the public hears that there is a manifesto, their interest usually focuses on confirming the perpetrator’s motive,” said Lankford. “In cases where there are big questions or suspicions about the answer provided by the news media (e.g., did this perpetrator align with liberals or conservatives?), some members of the public want to see the document for themselves.”
RELATED: How conservative X accounts promoted wild theory implicating Gov. Tim Walz in lawmaker’s killing
