Are there legal documents, affidavits, or court filings supporting the claim about Walz and Boelter?
Executive summary
Federal and state court filings in the Vance Boelter prosecution do exist and include affidavits, a federal criminal complaint and sealed filings that reference a handwritten letter in which Boelter asserted Gov. Tim Walz had instructed him to kill U.S. senators — but the claim appears only as Boelter’s own writing or statements within investigative affidavits and has not been independently corroborated in the public record cited here [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. What legal documents are publicly reported to exist
Federal filings in the U.S. District Court docket for United States v. Boelter include a criminal complaint and an attached affidavit by an FBI agent, entries that note petitions to seal and to unseal, and a publicly accessible DocumentCloud file of USA v. Boelter that reporters have used to read court paperwork [1] [4]; local reporting and court documents also show state arrest warrants and sworn probable-cause statements in Hennepin County related to murder and attempted murder charges [5] [2].
2. What those documents say about the allegation involving Gov. Walz
Among the materials seized and described in the post-arrest federal affidavit are notebooks, lists of public officials and a handwritten letter recovered from a vehicle that prosecutors attached to filings which quotes Boelter claiming Gov. Walz had instructed him to kill certain U.S. senators — that letter’s text is described in reporting summarizing the affidavit [2] [3]. News outlets reporting on the unsealed affidavits and the criminal complaint have reproduced key lines and described where that material appears in the investigators’ timeline [6] [7].
3. Legal weight of the material and how courts treat it
The documents cited are part of investigative affidavits and a federal criminal complaint, filings prosecutors use to establish probable cause and to support arrest and charging decisions; the CourtListener docket explicitly lists a complaint with an attached affidavit and motions to seal/unseal, demonstrating that material was presented to a magistrate judge in the federal system [1]. An affidavit and criminal complaint are not themselves determinations of guilt, but they are sworn law-enforcement statements that courts rely on to proceed with charges and initial hearings [1] [4].
4. Corroboration, context and competing interpretations
Reporting makes clear the statement about Gov. Walz comes from Boelter’s own handwriting or statements recovered during the investigation and is quoted in the affidavit, and multiple outlets also flagged that fact-checking inquiries have treated links between Walz and the shootings as unsubstantiated — meaning the public record cited here contains the suspect’s claim but not independent corroboration tying Walz to any instruction or conspiracy [3] [8]. Alternative interpretations are therefore immediate and material: prosecutors can file and quote inculpatory writings to describe motive or state of mind, while defenders and fact-checkers note that a suspect’s written claims do not equal verified facts; the sources provided do not report independent evidence corroborating Boelter’s allegation against Gov. Walz [3] [8].
5. What the record does not (yet) show and what to watch next
The sources reviewed document affidavits, seized writings and the federal complaint as the basis for arrest and indictment proceedings [1] [4] [2], but they do not show any independent corroborating legal filings or evidentiary material tying Gov. Walz to direction of violence beyond Boelter’s own statements as quoted in those filings; absent further unsealed discovery, grand-jury exhibits, or investigative findings released by prosecutors, the only references to Walz in the court-related material cited here are Boelter’s own written assertions reported in the affidavits and press summaries [3] [2] [8].