The children of murdered Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman have called for Donald Trump to take down a Truth Social post, which linked her killing to the state governor, Tim Walz.
Hortman and her husband, Mark, were murdered on June 14, 2025, along with their golden retriever, by a man impersonating a police officer.
Over the weekend, Trump re-shared a post suggesting that fellow Democrats targeted the Hortmans for “exposing a multi-billion dollar money laundering fraud going to illegal immigrants.”
Colin Hortman, the son of the murdered couple, begged Trump to take the post down in an emotional statement as the family continues to grieve.
“I am asking President Trump to remove the video that he shared and apologize to me and my family for posting this misinformation and for using my mother’s own words to dishonor her memory,” he wrote in the statement, which was seen by NBC News.
Trump’s post included a video that claimed that the alleged fraud case involved “child care” and “health care rackets,” run by Somali immigrants, whom the social media user claims came to the United States illegally.
It goes on to claim that the Hortman couple’s alleged shooter, Vance Boelter, had been ordered to carry out the murder by Governor Tim Walz.
The motive given was that Hortman had voted against her party to strip taxpayer-funded health care coverage for illegal immigrants shortly before her death.
The evidence given by the original social media user was a letter, written by Boelter and mailed to FBI Director Kash Patel. In the document, Boelter claims that Walz instructed him to kill Amy Klobuchar, among some other redacted names.
Boelter, a former employee of Walz’s, alleged that the governor would “hurt my family” if he did not “play ball.”
He also details an alleged meeting, organized by the governor, in which he met with a woman referred to as “Mel.”
According to Boelter, he carried out a double shooting shortly after.
Lawmakers maintain that Boelter first attempted to murder John Hoffman, a member of the Minnesota Senate, his wife, Yvette, and their daughter, Hope. According to the attorney’s office, all three survived the attack.
Boelter allegedly travelled to the Hortman’s residence shortly after, before killing the couple. He was caught two days later in the biggest manhunt in Minnesota state history.
Currently, he faces six federal charges in relation to the case, including stalking, murder, and attempted shooting. If found guilty, the Attorney’s Office says that he faces life in prison or even death.
Governor Walz, who ran as a running mate with former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, has vehemently denied the suggestion that he ordered Boelter to commit the crime. He has also condemned the president for re-sharing the conspiracy theory on social media.
“Dangerous, depraved behavior from the sitting president of the United States,” Walz wrote. “In covering for an actual serial killer, he is going to get more innocent people killed. America is better than this.”
Meanwhile, the Hortman family has reiterated its call for Trump to take down the post. Sophie Hortman, Colin’s sister, wrote that the post promotes a “false narrative.”
“The video being shared by the president is another hurdle our family must overcome in grieving the loss of my parents, Mark and Melissa, and their beloved [dog] Gilbert,” she added, in a statement also seen by NBC News. “I ask President Trump to please consider the pain and sadness we have faced, and to honor the spirit of the holidays we have just spent without our parents by taking down the post on Truth Social.”
In recent weeks, Trump has seized upon conspiracy theories about immigration to Minnesota by Somali migrants.
His administration recently shared an AI-generated trailer for an animated film entitled Minnesota Millionaires, which depicts Somali men travelling to the state in order to defraud the state’s daycare program.
“We don’t need to be pirates anymore. I found a better way. Government-funded daycare. We must go to Minnesota,” a character in the video says, referencing the fraud cases leveled against some daycare centres that support the children of Somali immigrants.
Amid the intense pressure put on the Minnesotan government by Trump over the daycare fraud allegations, Walz decided to drop out of the 2026 Minnesota Gubernatorial Race.
Speaking at a public statement today, Walz said that he could not give “give a political campaign my all” after an “extraordinarily difficult year for our state.”
He cited the childcare program investigations as a particular example of the pressures placed upon him, ever since he rocketed to fame as Kamala Harris’s running mate in the 2024 election.
“Donald Trump and his allies – in Washington, in St. Paul, and online – want to make our state a colder, meaner place,” Walz said in a statement. “They want to poison our people against each other by attacking our neighbors. And, ultimately, they want to take away much of what makes Minnesota the best place in America to raise a family.”
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