Utah Sen. Mike Lee is facing outrage and calls for his resignation over social media posts that baselessly claim the man charged with targeting Minnesota lawmakers in shootings during the weekend has ties to the political left.
Prominent right-wing figures, including Elon Musk, Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) and former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, spread now-debunked claims that leftist politics motivated the shooting spree that left one Minnesota state representative dead and another wounded.
The lawmakers’ spouses also were shot, one fatally.
Lee on Sunday morning wrote two posts on X featuring an FBI-released surveillance camera image of Vance Luther Boelter, whose car contained a hit list targeting many Democratic Minnesota officials such as Gov. Tim Walz and Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.
- One of Lee’s posts read, “This is what happens (w)hen Marxists don’t get their way.”
- “Nightmare on Waltz Street,” the next stated, in an apparently-misspelled reference to Walz, who ran for vice president last year.
- Lee called Marxism a “deadly mental illness” in a Saturday post about the shootings.
Walz and the previous governor had appointed Boelter to a civilian economic board, leading to a blitz of rightwing speculation this weekend that Boelter, who was arrested late Sunday, had Democratic ties.
Boelter’s friends say he held deeply conservative religious and political views, the AP reported.
