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Vance Boelter Facing Federal Charges For Stalking, Murder; Israel Identifies Incoming Missile From Iran. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired June 16, 2025 - 12:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: To make sure that we connect the dots properly, could you name the other two officials?

JOE THOMPSON, ACTING U.S. ATTORNEY: You know, we can't at this time. It wouldn't surprise me if they publicly identify themselves, but it's not really my place to do that if they want to protect their own privacy.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What's your message to Minnesotans who may get a late-night knock on the door from police if something's going on in their communities? I mean, can you just speak on that?

THOMPSON: I'm going to let law enforcement handle that one. I don't know if someone --

CHIEF MARK BRULEY, BROOKLYN PARK POLICE DEPARTMENT: Good morning. Police Chief Mark Bruley, Brooklyn Park Police Department. Great question. Like we sent out a message to our community when this first occurred is, you always can call 911 and verify if the person at your door is a police officer.

If they are a working police officer, they will be connected to a dispatch center that can validate that. So the first thing I would do is, if you're concerned about it, is call 911.

Obviously, there's a lot of different uniforms, and it's never wrong to do that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can you clarify the shootings? Because we were told, I believe, that the person in custody did shoot at police, at the Hortman residence. That's an important detail.

DREW EVANS, MINNESOTA BUREAU OF CRIMINAL APPREHENSION: Yes, so I'll answer this again. That's part of the active investigation, and I know there's been a lot that's going on, but as any time law enforcement uses deadly force, there's a walled-off separate investigation to examine that. At that time, I will tell you, we still work through, we are gathering evidence when we go through. This happened incredibly fast.

What I can tell you is the police officers that were there on scene, that while they were assessing the situation, that the gunfire erupted. And we are still working through and reconstructing that crime scene. We've gathered all of the evidence related to that. And what was said there is that this is definitely happening very quickly, and we definitely know that he began shooting at the Hortmans, as will be detailed in this information, immediately once the officers were assessing the situation.

Whether or not the gunfire was returned at the officers or not, we are working through that, and we need to recreate that crime scene itself.

But, and I should say, I want to say, in that process, the gunfire was erupting in such a way all around that that is partly why, the reasonable interpretation on some of those is where that came from initially.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Can you identify the potential motive here? It is widely reported that the list, this hit list, contained names of people who are abortion rights supporters. And also, can you please release the names of the two other targeted victims who were fortunate to get away?

THOMPSON: As I said, with respect to the other two potential victims, I think it's up to them whether they want to publicly identify themselves. As I said, it wouldn't surprise me if they do. They're elected officials. But that's their right.

Obviously, they may have families and children and privacy interests that they need to sort through. So I'll let them do that. With respect to the potential motive, let me say this. There's been a lot of press coverage and speculation and discussion of a manifesto. I've seen nothing like a Unabomber-style manifesto in his writings.

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. Obviously, his primary motive was to go out and murder people. Now, they were all elected officials. They were all Democrats.

Beyond that, I think it's just way too speculative for anyone that's reviewed these materials to know and to say what was motivating him in terms of ideology or specific issues. There's a lot of --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: For abortion rights supporters?

THOMPSON: There were some abortion rights supporters, I believe, on the list. Again, there was dozens and dozens and dozens of names on, you know, hundreds of pages of documents that were recovered with his writings on them.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did he confess and give more details after he was apprehended last night?

THOMPSON: I'm not going to comment on that at this time.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can you talk about how long this pre-planning and surveillance went on? Do you have any idea? THOMPSON: Here's what I've gone on for an extensive period of time. I

think it's unclear. The writings appear to have been done at various times over the course of at least months, I would say. But beyond that, it's speculative.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did he have two -- there's kind of two questions that go towards the same thing. He appeared to be involved with some kind of a home security or professional security operation. I wonder if you have any details into that. And was he familiar to law enforcement, even though he didn't appear to have any kind of serious criminal record in state?

THOMPSON: I've seen the press reporting on his security company. I don't know anything beyond that or any involvement that that would have in this case. And I have no knowledge of his interactions with law enforcement prior to this.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Can you comment at all about his car, the light pack, the license plate, maybe a bit of a badge sniffer? Was he obsessed with police?

THOMPSON: I have no idea. I think I skipped over the slide. The police license plate wasn't an official-looking police license plate, as you can tell.

[12:35:02]

It said, I believe it was like a reflective black things that you would buy to put on like a mailbox. Like your address on a mailbox.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Was he a bit obsessed with the dominoes?

THOMPSON: I have no idea.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMAE: There have been reports that his wife was, quote, detained at a rest stop in Onania, and that in her car was found weapons, passports, and a lot of cash. She was also with three children. Is that true? And is the wife being investigated?

THOMPSON: I'll defer to law enforcement on that one.

EVANS: Yes. I can answer the question. So when, you know, the question was detained. Obviously, when an individual commits these heinous acts and we knew he was the suspect in this case, we're going to want to talk to the family.

You know, at this point in time, this is under active prosecution, and so we want to be careful about what we say. She was cooperative with us at that time. There were firearms in the vehicle at the time, and valid reasons for her to -- she was legally in possession, I should say that, at this time, and there were other items that were recovered. But we're going to leave that to some of the prosecution as we work this out.

So we're not going to comment on all of it, as this is still continuing to be part of the active investigation. We need to figure out exactly what all this means in relation to this.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: To be clear, there's not going to be a first appearance in district court then today, and then where is he being held?

THOMPSON: There will be an initial appearance in federal court over in St. Paul, Minnesota at 1.30 Central Time this afternoon. I do not anticipate there will be an appearance in state court today.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just one more question on the hit list. You said 45 names, and we've seen more than that. Was there more than 45?

THOMPSON: There's lots of -- I mean, go ahead.

EVANS: And I think it can help. I mean, just there's a lot of names that we're working together right now. So the FBI, there are some, and we've mentioned this, that there are some other names that are from out of state. They have been working through our fusion center network across the United States, and then our partners at the FBI are helping coordinate with that in that process.

The question is a good one. Part of what we're looking through, the names, the numbers that you're referencing, they are -- was names in multiple notebooks. Some of them are redundant. So I don't have a total number of people that were in there because some of them are overlapping on multiple lists.

And, again, 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 in terms of that, just to be clear about it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And was Senator Hoffman's name even in there, though?

THOMPSON: I believe it was.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Okay.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Where is he being held?

THOMPSON: Right now I think he's in the custody of the United States Marshals Service over at the St. Paul Federal Courthouse. Beyond that, I'll defer to the marshals on where he'll be held, assuming he's held in custody pending trial.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Can today's court appearance be considered an arraignment? Is there anything you can tell us about what's going to be today?

THOMPSON: It'll be an initial appearance because he's only charged by complaint. He has not yet been indicted. So he'll have an initial appearance, as all defendants do, before a federal judge, where he'll be asked to identify himself. The court will appoint a lawyer to represent him, or he can retain one and have a lawyer represent him. And then the court will ask whether or not we will move to seek his detention pending trial, which we obviously will. And then the court could set a detention hearing and a preliminary hearing to assess whether or not there's probable cause to charge him by complaint. How much of that will happen actually today is unclear. We'll see at 1:30.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And is that the Warren E. Burger Federal Building? That's the only court appearance today?

THOMPSON: Correct.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you.

UNDIENTIFIED MALE: For Superintendent Evans, yesterday, the way that things played out yesterday when you came up for the 5:30 or so press conference, did you know that he was close to being caught at that point? Or did it come as a surprise when you got the trail cam information or from a neighbor who saw him in the field?

EVANS: So, you know, we, as noted, we still had belief that he was in Sylvia County. When we held that, we did not know the information specifically that he was there based on the overall investigative that was still our belief there. But the specific information that led to his arrest at that time, we were not tracking yet.

So, I mean, and I assume that's related to the timeline. These teams and the law enforcement teams acted very quickly when they had a specific lead that led us to know he was in that area. And so it was a relatively short period of time where they converged and were able to do that.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What we knew before this conference was bad enough. What you have told us is even worse. Where does this rank in terms of attacks that you know of across the United States? And you addressed some of your reactions, but can you all please give us your reactions?

THOMPSON: Look, I mean, this was a political assassination, which is not a word we use very often in the United States, let alone here in Minnesota. It's a chilling attack on our democracy, on our way of life. It's only the most recent example of violent political extremism in this country, and that's a trend that's been increasing in recent years, and that's unfortunate.

[12:40:00]

And I hope it's a wake-up call to everyone that people can disagree with you without being evil or needing to be killed or hurt.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You mentioned that multiple different aspects of this investigation were found in multiple different notebooks. How many were discovered, and were they all in his vehicle?

THOMPSON: My understanding is some notebooks were recovered from his vehicle and others from his house, although obviously there was law enforcement literally from all around the state. I couldn't even begin to identify all of them. Representatives of many of those, or some of those agencies are here, but far more were involved. And so, all I can say is there was many notebooks recovered from multiple locations.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did it make sense about him going back home? Like what was he thinking? Did he say he was trying to get back to his house? I mean, it's odd, I guess, you could say.

THOMPSON: I can't speculate as to what was in his mind. He obviously went on a murderous rampage on Friday, so I think I'm not aligned with this thought process.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. Winston, can you talk about is there any sort of attention being paid to what kind of safety needs to be given to politicians at this time, or is this a space where people feel like any threat has left with this arrest?

ALVIN WINSTON, FBI SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE FOR MINNESOTA FIELD OFFICE: OK, so what we're going to do is we're going to, of course, take these threats as serious as possible and throw all available resources towards these threats. We are in lockstep with the Capitol Police on a regular basis, and we're continuing to have those conversations about threats towards politicians. Thank you for that question.

THOMPSON: Maybe one more question here before we wrap up.

UNIDENIFIED FEMALE: This is for Chief Bruley. Just wanted to wrap it back to hoping you can speak to just how pivotal it is that your officers acted proactively, stopping by the Portman's house and likely stopping more victims.

BRULEY: Yes, great question, just for everybody in the room. The question is how important was it that the police officer stopped at Representative Hortman's house, which really foiled this entire plan. It's incredibly important.

That started with a sergeant who was actually off duty, was walking out of the building and had heard that there was a shooting in another community at Senator Hoffman's house. Being alert, seeing two officers in the police department said, hey, drive by Melissa Hortman's house and just check on the house, would you? And that's essentially what they pulled up and found that in the driveway was the car, and essentially the criminal act was occurring as they pulled up.

Had they not foiled the plan, you know, essentially took his vehicle away from him, which involved all his maps, all his names, all his weaponry, I would be very scared what it would look like over the next few hours had we not done that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just to clarify, did your sergeant know about the New Hope and Maple Grove incidents or just the one in Champlin?

BRULEY: He only knew about the one that occurred in Champlin.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So the officer that -- the other officer that came upon him at the second house and saw him sitting in a vehicle, did she realize, like, did she report that and did they try to chase him, did she realize that was suspect? Or did he --

THOMPSON: I don't think she did. She knew something was awry, and then he left and proceeded to Brooklyn Park and carried out the next shooting. So he got lost in the chaos of the event, not lost in the chaos of events, but there was a new shooting shortly thereafter.

It really is remarkable to the question earlier how he went to four houses that night and in three of them, or two of them he encountered law enforcement and the third and fourth one and the second one no one was home at all. It's remarkable how diligent law enforcement was at 2:30, 3 o'clock, and 3:30 in the morning on a Friday night, that they were responding just to do wellness checks on our politicians.

It's a testament. The last 48 hours have been an incredible testament to the professionalism and dedication and commitment of our federal, state, and local law enforcement. Thank you all.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you.

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: That was absolutely chilling. We learned so much more about the horrific events that went on overnight, Friday night into Saturday. I want to bring in our CNN chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst, John Miller.

I mean, just a few of the quotes off the top. He stalked his victims like prey. It's not an exaggeration to say that this is the stuff of nightmares.

This is something that this shooter was preparing for months. There was a list of about 45 elected officials. We learned for the first time here that it wasn't just the two houses in which he actually shot people. There were two others that he visited.

And, you know, I'll let you take it from there, John, but obviously from a law enforcement perspective.

[12:45:00]

Read between the lines for us beyond the absolute jaw-dropping shock and disgust about the way that this man was trying to take down people as an act of political violence.

JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: Well, reading between the lines, what we're seeing is a pattern. I mean, if you look at the statements of the individual from the Boulder, Colorado attack from just a couple of weeks ago, Molotov cocktails against marchers for hostages, he said he was planning that for a year. If you look just before that, the Jewish Museum attack, you have an individual who was planning that in extraordinary detail before he struck.

And then you look at this attack, all different agendas, all separate motivations. But another individual who has been stalking, collecting, surveilling, mapping, supplying, arming and thinking about this. So this goes back to what we learned from the FBI profilers in behavioral science. We tend to say because these things burst out suddenly, this individual snapped and this attack followed. These people don't snap. This is a slow boil and we're seeing the result of it, but we're also seeing it with greater frequency.

But as you framed it, Dana, we learned so much in the last few minutes about the details that had been sidelined because job one was finding him. And that's what the focus was. But when he came to Senator Hoffman's house, showing up in his fake police uniform with his fake police car, he said, open up. This is the police. We have a report of a shooting at your house.

What he is now we're in a hall of mirrors. What he is using as his ruse is that there's some kind of swatting call, which politicians have become accustomed to late night visits from the police. Then when they say you're not a cop, noticing that he may be wearing this latex mask, his badge doesn't look right. He says this is a robbery and forces his way into the house.

What we then learn, of course, is that he went on to another location and then another location of other elected officials where he didn't make contact before getting to the to the speaker's house where he engaged in that murderous rampage.

So this would have been a night of terror. And frankly, as was pointed out, had that off duty sergeant not said, hey, while we have this shooting going on a couple of towns away, let's start to hit these locations and check on our elected officials.

BASH: Right. And just maybe it goes without saying, but it is important to say in this country, somebody is charged. He has not yet formally been charged. We just saw and heard about this 20-page complaint. That was what John Thompson, the acting U.S. attorney, was reading from. We are going to see that happen presumably later on today. So he is the alleged shooter at this point.

And I also want to get into a little bit more detail with you, John, because the fact that he allegedly went to the first house, John Hoffman did exactly as you described, then left there, went to a second house and rang the doorbell. The state legislator who he was trying to find was not there, then went to a third house. We don't know if anybody was home there.

What we did learn in this press conference was that a law enforcement official pulled up next to him in his SUV, tried to talk to him and he did not answer. And the decision right then to check -- to make a wellness check and not stay with this alleged shooter was pretty consequential, given the fact that he apparently went from there to Melissa Hortman's house. And that's where he allegedly murdered her and her husband.

MILLER: And we really need a little more detail on that, because as you point out, that could have been a life and death decision, which is did the vehicle look like a neighborhood patrol, a security patrol? Did he say something or did he say nothing? But, you know, the instinct to go check on that house. But, yes, I

mean, there are a couple of things. When they go back over this with a fine tooth comb, there will be some brilliant moments and there may be some that require a much deeper look about decisions made in the field.

BASH: Yes, no question. And then just the idea that he and I know our colleague Whitney Wild learned this yesterday, but they made clear that there was no manifesto in particular. There were notebooks, there were notes, there were, you know, pieces of paper that led them to put this together that he had been apparently planning this for months.

[12:50:02]

But it wasn't what you saw during the Unabomber times.

MILLER: Well, that's right. And, I mean, to be clear, manifesto was introduced into this conversation early on by law enforcement. But I think not in a public way, I think that was in their kind of speed reading of we've got a very complicated notebook with a lot of opinions and thoughts of it that may give us a window into opportunity. But we also have this extensive list of names.

So, 70 names to start off with, 15 more found during a search warrant yesterday -- Saturday at a residence where he often stayed. And then the statements today that the notebooks are rife with different names, addresses.

So these seem to be his research materials. Basically what we would have called in law enforcement his targeting package, where he's gathering intelligence, putting together locations with that intelligence and details. And then separate thoughts about his thinking on a number of issues, which they didn't really get into today. So our best clues into his targeting and his motive were his choice of targets.

BASH: Yes, no question about it. John Miller, we're very lucky to have you to help us work through this as we learn so many just, again, jaw- dropping details. Thank you so much.

Back here. Nia, also we heard from another one of the law enforcement officials. This was a target attack to individuals who decided to answer the call to public service.

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: That's right. All the folks that he was targeting were Democrats. This was political violence. One of the gentlemen up there said that political violence in this country is rare. It is not rare. We have seen this happen time and time again.

Four presidents have been assassinated. There was obviously the attempted assassination on President Trump as he was running, Nancy Pelosi's husband, Gabby Giffords. The list goes on and on. Josh Shapiro more recently with the arson situation at his residence.

So this is part of our culture. It is part of our history. And it's terrible. I think what is different now is that we do have social media. We do have artificial intelligence. We do have misinformation. And quite frankly, we have a president who often laughs at political violence. Right? It was a punch line oftentimes when he mentioned Paul Pelosi at rallies.

So that is an ingredient, I think, that can't be dismissed. And it is a partisan point to say that this is a unique political figure in Donald Trump who seems to often not take political violence seriously.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: We know that Minnesota, just what was happening at this time, Minnesota is a divided state without question. And in the legislature, it was perfectly divided in the House of Representatives. And Melissa Hortman, who lost her life, she entered into a power-sharing agreement with the Republican leaders to get things done. But she was a very, very visible Democrat in Minnesota.

And the officials there, Joe Thompson, the acting U.S. attorney, said that this had been plotted for months. Well, as those months were going on, she was obviously in the news and the legislature was as well in a divided state.

BASH: OK, I just need to interrupt because we have other big news happening as we were listening to that out of Minnesota.

Israel is identifying incoming missiles from Iran. And there are sirens being activated in northern Israel. Civilians have been advised to seek shelter. And defense systems are working to intercept projectiles. That is according to the military there. We're going to get one of our colleagues up there.

Jamie, as we get this news.

JAMIE GANGEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Are we talking about Israel? Or are we talking --

BASH: Yes, Israel.

GANGEL: So I just want to say earlier today when I was talking to Israeli sources, they have said that they feel this is going to go days, weeks, that it's open-ended. They do not see Iran coming back to the table. They're also taking advantage of the moment that they have. But the other thing that's been quite clear in talking to Israelis is they've never taken hits like what they are seeing today.

BASH: Exactly.

GANGEL: It is, you know, they've just been overwhelmed. And when they see these strikes coming, and there have been many more fatalities this time in the past, they're shook up by it.

BASH: Well, I mean, just to sort of boil it down, it's kind of coming from the mothership --

GANGEL: Right. BASH: -- as opposed to the Iranian proxies, which we have seen. You know, they were pretty well-armed Iranian proxies. We know that. We're talking about Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah before in Lebanon, and, of course, the Houthis in Yemen.

[12:55:09]

This is coming from Iran.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: And I think one of the questions that I had that I bounced off national security officials the first couple of days after the initial Israeli strikes was, if you just go back to last year, the Biden administration, Iran launched one of the largest-scale ballistic missile launches targeting Israel in history, maybe the largest, that was blocked by a significant kind of diplomatic effort from the Biden administration and others, Arab nations contributed to it, that they planned for -- for several months. When was that coming to that scale, and what would happen if all of those defenses weren't necessarily in place?

And the response I got was, keep in mind, they lost their entire command and control in those initial stages, and they have that capability. We'll see how this plays out, but the expectation was something like that or larger would be coming soon, and it appears that this is kind of the moment where that's going to play out.

BASH: And obviously the IDF, the Israeli government and military, made a decision to launch this really, you know, multi-headed strike last week, and they say that they were very successful, Iran says so too, in getting a lot of the top Iranian military leaders some of the nuclear assets, but they also knew that they were poking a bear, and the bear's fighting back right now.

And so what that means is that people in Israel know that they have the Iron Dome, they have other defense systems, and they also have bomb shelters, and they're spending a lot of time in these bomb shelters, and some of this, all of those defenses, doesn't always work.

ZELENY: For sure, as we've already seen.

BASH: Hold that thought. We do have Nic Robertson. Nic, what are you seeing?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yes, nothing here where we're located in central Israel, in Tel Aviv. There's a possibility that these early warnings that are being given are about missiles that are headed towards northern Israel. Of course, we've seen Iran try to cluster some of its munitions around the port city of Haifa.

Not quite clear what they're targeting there, but certainly there are energy, oil-type installations in that port city, and three people were killed in Iranian ballistic missile strikes there overnight.

But the early warning messaging here that the residents of this city will heed to get themselves to the shelters, to take precautions, safety precautions ahead of a strike, those level of alarms have not been triggered.

What we understand from the IDF is that they have detected these Iranian missiles incoming, and I think the specifics at the moment are pointing to northern Israel, but of course that information gets updated because Iran is trying to use new technology, new tactics, to try to spoof, to try to fool Israel's defensive systems.

BASH: And Nic, you know, we have now been seeing the back-and-forth between Iran and Israel for several days now. Can you put into context this particular alert and this particular warning from the IDF how -- whether it's different or whether it's sort of more of the same?

ROBERTSON: It feels at this moment potentially more of the same. The sun is beginning to set here. Sort of track more than 1,000 miles eastwards into Iran, the sun will be pretty much down. That's the time that Iran can get their ballistic missiles out and fuel them up. They can't fuel them in the tunnels because it's such an explosive mix of chemicals, of oxygen and the propellants.

They can't do it in the tunnels. They have to do it outside the tunnels. Israel has eyes in the sky, can see what they're doing. They're vulnerable if they do it in the daylight. So it's this time of night that I think everyone is expecting the ballistic missiles to start flying. Obviously they do get some up during the day, but this is the pattern.

You know, talking to people in the city here today, they are expecting more strikes to come there. They'll be expecting them here tonight, and potentially in the coming days. That's the expectation.

BASH: All right, Nic, needless to say, please stay safe. Thank you for that reporting. And back here at the table. Jeff, I interrupted you.

ZELENY: No, I was just saying that I mean, as Jamie was pointing out earlier this is something that is going to go on for some time for weeks perhaps. So this is obviously has overshadowed the meeting of the G7 where the president and other leaders are. So this is a crisis without question that divides the president's a base. Just to put a political lens on it.

BASH: Final quick word.

MATTINGLY: It's war. It's war. I think we're -- everybody's so used to back and forth. You mentioned the proxies, which kind of drive that this is -- this is war.

[13:00:04]

And I think it -- the Israelis were very clear -- clear-eyed about that when they started this, when they launched this particular conflict. And people need to recognize that.

BASH: Thank you. Thank you all. What an hour. Appreciate it. Please stay tuned. CNN News Central is going to start next.