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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Rachel Leingang and Joseph Gedeon

How the right spread ‘brutal and cruel’ misinformation after Minnesota lawmaker killings

a women looking left
Tina Smith, a Minnesota senator, at the US Capitol on 9 January 2024. Photograph: Anna Rose Layden/Reuters

Tina Smith, a Minnesota senator, confronted Mike Lee, a Utah senator, on Monday to tell him directly that his social media posts fueled ongoing misinformation about a shooting that killed her friend.

Lee’s posts, which advanced conspiracies that a Minnesota assassin was a “Marxist” and blamed the state’s governor for Melissa Hortman’s death, were among many threads of false or speculative claims swirling online after the killings.

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