Don’t be so quick to trust the feds

In an opinion piece in the Star Tribune on June 28 (“Now isn’t the time for a turf war with the feds,” Strib Voices), Rochelle Olson decried the decision of Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty to seek to go first in the prosecution of Vance Boelter for the assassination of former House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and the attempted assassination of state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette.

Olson overlooks the obvious elephant in the room: U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi. Bondi sprang onto the national scene when, as Florida’s attorney general, she refused to join several other state attorneys general in a case against Florida’s Trump University (which led to the disbanding of it), while receiving a $25,000 campaign contribution from Donald Trump.

Bondi has demonstrated a willingness to do Trump’s bidding, serving as Trump’s lawyer at the Justice Department, not the country’s. She’s fired multiple prosecutors for not demonstrating sufficient fealty to Trump, most recently axing three prosecutors who tried Jan. 6 insurrection cases. She’s willing to lean on line prosecutors to do Trump’s bidding.

One of the important public purposes of the prosecution of Boelter will be to lay bare the role of MAGA in Boelter’s radicalization. With a federal prosecution team under the thumb of the highly partisan Bondi, we cannot be sure that will happen. In fact, it probably won’t happen. There has already been a pulling away from surveillance and investigation of right-wing terror organizations by the Trump administration’s Justice Department.

Minnesotans ought to be worried about the efforts of the Justice Department to bigfoot Moriarty on this one. We want to know why the victims were targeted, not merely that they were.

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Update: 7/18/25: The acting US attorney is baffled as to why Boelter killed Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark and tried to kill John Hoffman and his wife Yvette:

A motive, however, remains unclear.

“That leaves us with the why.

“Why did Vance Boelter do this? Why did he carry out this political assassination?” Thompson said. “That’s a harder question.”

If you don’t see the beginning of burying Boelter’s right wing, anti-abortion, Christian nationalist mindset and motive here, you aren’t paying attention.

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Update: 7/20/25: Pamela Jo Bondi has summarily fired scores (really) of insufficiently loyal (to President Trump) prosecutors. Don’t you imagine that Minnesota’s Acting U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson is looking over his shoulder?

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Update: 7/23/25: Even more reason for Acting U.S. Attorney in Minnesota Joe Thompson to look over his shoulder. Bondi is out of control.

Bondi tweet about firing career U.S. prosecutor

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Update 8/9/25: Remember a couple of updates ago where Acting U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson said that trying to figure out Vance Boelter’s motive was difficult? According to Substacker Ken Klippenstein, speaking on Molly Jong Fast’s podcast on August 9th, the feds are adopting a new category for crime statistics called ‘nihilistic violent extremist.’ It would replace more specific categories like ‘neo-Nazi.’

As Klippenstein observed, it drains the politics out of it. Why would the administration want to do that?

Do you imagine that Vance Boelter will be characterized by Joe Thompson’s office as a ‘nihilistic violent extremist,’ rather than what he is: a Christian nationalist and ulta-MAGA adherent?