John Hoffman

John Hoffman is a Minnesota State Senator. On 14 June 2025 he and his wife Yvette were shot at their home, and their daughter Hope was the subject of an attempted shooting, in an attack that also killed Minnesota House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark.

The Attack and the Federal Case

A federal grand jury indicted Vance Luther Boelter on 15 July 2025, following a two-day manhunt that ended with his arrest near his family’s residence in Green Isle, Minnesota. The counts included stalking and shooting the Hoffmans, the attempted shooting of their daughter, and the stalking and murders of the Hortmans.

Boelter pleaded guilty to six federal offences — among them stalking resulting in death, murder through use of a firearm, and discharging a firearm during crimes of violence — and on 23 July 2026 was sentenced to two consecutive life terms plus a consecutive forty years, before Judge John R. Tunheim.

The Justice Department’s account of what the court documents show is specific: Boelter acted alone, “extensively researched his intended targets, and used disguises, firearms, and law-enforcement-style equipment to gain access to the victims’ residences.”

Relevance to This Site

Hoffman appears here as the surviving victim of a targeted attack on elected officials, not as a figure in political media. The FBI’s own framing — “this targeted violence was an attack on the rule of law” — is the reason the case is on this site: it is the most fully documented recent instance of research-driven, individually-targeted violence against state legislators, and the record of how the targets were selected is in the court file rather than in inference.

What Is Not Established Here

Removed in the citation audit: his birth year, and the description of the attack as “politically motivated” in the project’s voice. The federal record establishes the targeting and the defendant’s admitted intent to attack multiple elected officials; the characterization of motive is left to the sources that made it. His legislative career, his district and his committee work are not covered, because nothing sourced in this pass documents them.