Was the man who allegedly killed a Minnesota lawmaker and her husband and wounded another couple a Republican or Democrat? Did he support Trump, as some reports claim? Blaze News investigative reporter Joseph Hanneman joins Glenn Beck to reveal just how weird and unusual this story is: “The more we learn about him, the less this entire thing makes sense.”

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Joe, welcome to the program. How are you?

JOE: Thanks for having me, Glenn.

GLENN: You bet. It's great to have you. You used to work for the Epic Times. And you guys, I think you tear it up over there.

Really, some good reporting over there. You also cowrote and appeared in three January 6 documentaries.

And you told the real story there.

And you also work for the Wisconsin state journal, and the Chicago Tribune. So it's nice to have you on board for TheBlaze.

Let me ask you, Joe. What do you find creepy or suspicious about this guy. This guy that nobody is paying attention to.

That just tried to kill a bunch of people.

And, you know, did along with the No Kings movement.

JOE: Well, the more we learn about him, the less this entire thing makes sense.

Maybe -- he has a very unusual backstory.

He's worked a lot in the food industry. Companies like Del Monte. And Berger. In production.

Safety. Supervising.

You know, the plants, and keeping everything clean and safe.

He's probably moved around the country, at least a dozen times, in the past 20 years, with his jobs.

But he also has a background as a preacher, which we're just finding out, a little bit more about that.

I have a story about that. That he has traveled, around the world.

And at least in part, as a preacher. A Christian preacher, who -- who had studied at a -- at an institute there, in Dallas.

And he has been to Africa.

He's talking about going to the Middle East, and in the West Bank. And Gaza.

You know, talked about going there, to be basically a missionary to radical Islamists. And to tell them, as he put on one of his websites, that violence isn't the answer.

Now, that's an interesting -- interesting thing for -- for him to say.

I talked to Robert Spencer from jihad watch.

And he said, if he actually did that, he's fortunate to be alive.

Because typically, if you proselytize.

That's a death tense in Islam.

GLENN: Yeah.

STU: So he said, if he actually did that, you know, he would have been killed or taken hostage.

Unless they saw it, as he put it. They saw him as a fool.

And as kind of a break, and left him alone.

But he's also preached in the democratic republic of the Congo, several times.

In -- in an evangelical Christian church this.

And we've come across some very interesting video of him, talking about his -- his -- his story, to Christianity.

But he was so excited about talking about Christ, he put his arms out, almost like a bird. Flying around the stage.

Saying, you know, what Jesus has done for me.

And woo-hoo!

It's -- it's --

GLENN: Why -- I mean, we have the Del Monte guy going around, then preaching around the world.

And preaching the opposite things, he seemed to have -- did he become mentally ill?

And then -- before we get to that question.

When did he become involved in politics with Tim Walz and everything else?

JOE: Well, he was appointed to a governor's workforce development council, first by Governor Mark Dayton, who was a Democrat.

And then Tim Walz. Of course, we all know Tim Walz. He appointed him to a similar group.

And he spent about nine years on these boards.

These are adviser counsels, that typically.

GLENN: Was this when he was a preacher, or with Del Monte?

JASON: Well, you know, actually, some of this stuff overlapped, and it was all going on at the same time.

GLENN: Okay.

JASON: And he got other ventures that were going on, just this guy is -- is -- is really a puzzle.

But he did get appointed to these two commissions, by democratic governors.

And, you know, so we looked around to try to find out if there is -- aside from that, is there any indicators, that this was a political man.

We know he was pro-life.

He was opposed to abortion. He spoke about that. But we did not find any indication of political donations, either federally, state, or local. That he gave donations to any political party or candidate. The newspaper in Oklahoma City claims that he was a registered Republican, when he lived in Mulberry, Oklahoma.

But the -- the voting system folks out there, say, they don't keep records back that far anymore. So the article did not state where they got the information.

They didn't point to any proof of it.

So that seems fairly soft.

So we -- we just don't have a lot to go on.

Outside of this way backstory, with all these different jobs.

You know, he ostensibly ran a security company, called Pretorian guard.

Security services.

And he had several vehicles, that were kidded out, as the squad cars, basically.

You see these in different cities.

Pinkerton and other security counsels.

So he had several of those.
And, you know, he -- undoubtedly where he got his equipment. He was wearing the night that he committed these shootings.

And he was dressed up as a police officer.

But --

GLENN: In a creepy mask.

Okay. So hang on.

So we don't know if this guy had a political agenda. One way or another. On the -- I mean, he seemed to attack the Democrat, that was the one that was bucking the extreme, you know, left of her party.

Is there any -- is there any rhyme or reason of -- of -- or pattern of the people that were on his kill list?


JOE: Well, you know, that's one of the only tells that we have.

Is that he kept both in the vehicle, that he was driving that night, and in -- and in a room that he rented for his job. They found notebooks.

Handwritten notebooks. And in his car, there was what the FBI concluded was a hit list.

And there were more than 50 names on it.

And as far as I can tell, I have been checking every single one of them, but these were all Democrats. Not just Minnesota politicians.

But also in Iowa.

Illinois, and Wisconsin.

And he had lists of Planned Parenthood locations and officials in Minnesota on this list.

And, of course, the list didn't include a list of the former House speaker, who was assassinated along with her husband.

And the family dog. So, you know, that -- that list was very lopsided.

And we know -- do we know if any of those Democrats have anything in common?

Are they -- are they hard left?

Are they maybe mealy mouthed, you know, people that are -- I don't know.

I mean, she seems to be somebody who was bucking the system.

That the Democrats would want.
So it's not like this was a hard-core lefty. This seems like somebody who actually had a conscience. And was trying to do something that they really believed in. So why was she on the list?

Can you tell? Can you look at the politician's names to see any pattern on -- voting patterns or anything?

JOE: Well, in her case, ask this got almost no attention in the corporate press, within the past -- you know, past two weeks before her death. There was a key vote in the legislature in Minnesota. That would strip the subsidized health care for adults. Legal aliens.

And that was a very close vote.

And it turns out, she was the deciding vote.

The only one to cross party lines, to put that legislation over the top.

And so that -- you know, that certainly didn't endear her to -- to the left. Because that's a -- that's a kind of sacred cow.

And so come January 1st, next year, adult illegal aliens will no longer have access to the subsidized or free health care.

So that -- can that was a big vote.

And that something that you have to certainly put into the equation here and see if that provides any sort of -- any sort of motive.

But he didn't -- he really didn't have any visible interest in state politics. That we can see.

So, you know, there's --

GLENN: So bizarre.

JOE: There's a lot of somewhere. But, you know, he hasn't made at the same time to people that, oh. You know, so-and-so.

I just can't tanned this person.

Or -- or on the other side. You know, whether he was -- his -- his childhood friend claimed that he was a Trumper.

But, you know, we don't have any -- Minnesota is an open primary state.

So there's no records, we can check on that.

Just a lot of soft information.

And it -- I have a feeling, that when this is all said and done, his story, and the explanation, is going to go a lot deeper.

GLENN: Okay. Hold on just a second.

Because I've got a couple of questions.

Why did Tim Walz, you know, know this was a political assassination? Immediately.

You know, the -- phone now, that has been traced to several foreign countries. Is that because of the preaching thing.

His wife arrested with several passports.

I don't understand any of this.

So we'll get to that here in just a second.

We're talking to Joe Hanneman. He's TheBlaze News investigative reporter.

Just wrote another story on this today.

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Okay. So when this happened, we're talking about the Minnesota shooting.

Tim Walz comes out. Seemingly, almost immediately.

At least, that's what it felt.

And said, you know, this was a political assassination.

Was this just speculation?

Or wishful thinking? How did he know that?

JASON: That's a great question. And no one asked him that.

What led you to the conclusion that this is a politically connected assassination.

It clearly was targeted. I mean, he just elected his victims or potential victims from that night.

But you would think that you would have some Intel in nothing that was ever shared to say, yeah. This is why.

We know this is why.

In fact, the FBI and the -- the local police will not ascribe a motive. Even after looking at all his notebooks. Which they haven't released all the pages of them.

They did put them on the hit list.

Yeah. I found that to be very telling. He would describe it in that manner.

And I think that set off some of the back and forth between the right and the left of finger pointing on this.

GLENN: Right. And then the police knew somehow. Go to the second location. In advance of the shootings.

How did they do that?

JASON: Well, these communities are all fairly close together.

And after Senator Hoffmann was shot, and his wife was shot, at about 2:00 a.m. on the 14th, that word was circulated to all the area departments. And several of them did proactive policing.

And since, I checked out some of their law makers.

GLENN: But they didn't stop him, did they?

At the second location?

JASON: No. The second location, the family had changed their plans, and they were gone. So they were not even home.

It was the third location, where this fellow was parked in his fake squad car, about a block away from a state senator's home.

And the local police. New police department squad pulled up next to him, and tried to get his attention. Of course, he's got this creepy looking milky white mask over his head, and he just stared straight ahead.

And the officer apparently was satisfied by the look of the vehicle. And said, oh, this must be -- this must be an officer from some jurisdiction here, watching out from the house.

So that officer continued on to the state senator's home.

And waited for some backup. By the time, other squads arrived, he was gone.

He took off. And he went to the Hortman home, where he murdered the former speaker, her husband, and the family dog.

So he certainly could have been stopped. If -- if there had been maybe a little bit more -- shine the flashlight in there.

Or back in the window saying, hey, hey, but they didn't do that.

GLENN: Okay. So I've only got two minutes left.

So do you pick which one has more information in it.

The phone being traced to so many foreign countries. Or his wife being stopped, with cash and passports. And everything else in her car.

Do either of those make a difference to this story?

JASON: Well, I think there is an explanation for the wife. You know, he had texted. There's a group text to all of his family. His children and his wife. In which, he said, dad went to war last night. And he said, he didn't want to tell them much about that. Because he didn't want to implicate them, in anything he was doing.

And that he texted his wife -- said he called or texted his wife separately.

And said, there will be police coming to the house.

And they will be trigger happy.

And I don't want you to be there. So he triced her to -- to take the kids. But she -- she had $10,000 in cash. She had passports and she had the kids with her.

Well, of course, the police were tracking her phone.

And they pulled her over, you know, and he was 80 miles away. And she volunteered to let them look into her phone.

To look at the picks. They found the weapons and the ammunition in the vehicle as well.

So, you know, again, these things just make you pause.

GLENN: I know.

Joe, thank you so much.

Really great to have you writing for TheBlaze. We'll continue to talk to you about this and follow the story, because it's absolutely bizarre.

Appreciate it. Have a great weekend.