‘I don’t want this situation to end up like Minnesota’

A North Dakota man sent a threatening email to a federal official alluding to the assassination of Minnesota state lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband — and still tried to collect his confiscated firearm afterwards, authorities said Wednesday.

Charles Dalzell, 46, allegedly sent an email Sunday to the U.S. District Attorney’s Office in North Dakota implying that he or another person may repeat the Minnesota assassinations if officials, law enforcement and a judge continued to ignore him.

“I don’t want this situation to end up like Minnesota over the weekend,” Dalzell wrote, according to the criminal complaint. 

“When lawmakers make laws and the state doesn’t follow the laws they created it would probably piss some people off right,” he continued.

Last weekend, alleged assassin Vance Boelter gunned down Hortman and her husband in their Minnesota home. He dressed up as a cop to deceive them when he knocked on their door, heavily armed, and opened fire.

Dalzell asserted that he was owed money awarded in court, although no records indicate what case he may be referring to, the North Dakota Monitor reported.

He added that law enforcement was “attempting to silence him” and hide public officials’ wrongdoings.

He doubled down on Monday and sent another email degrading numerous North Dakota officials, including Gov. Kelly Armstrong.

Authorities arrested him later that day, according to court filings.

Dalzell had previously sent an email to the office in 2024 saying he was considering violence against an attorney he hired for a property matter, according to court filings.

When confronted by FBI agents who said his emails were “borderline threatening,” Dalzell insisted that he made no threats and that “if he wanted to go shoot a place up, he would not advertise it,” the filings state.

Dalzell owned a gun, but the Pembina County Sheriff’s Office had seized it in connection with a separate case.

He wanted it back. He went to the sheriff’s office to retrieve it, but evidently walked away empty-handed. When he was arrested soon after, investigators recovered methamphetamine and a machete at his property, the North Dakota Mirror reported.

Dalzell’s criminal history includes other convictions for disorderly conduct, as well as criminal mischief and domestic violence, according to court records. He claimed his gun was taken as part of an ongoing disorderly conduct case where he swore at a group of minors, but swore he never brandished the firearm.

Since the assassination in Minnesota, many politicians across the country have been on high alert, including some of the 45 officials named on Boelter’s supposed hit list.