Acting U.S. Attorney Joseph H. Thompson spoke to the media about the arrest of the man accused of shooting two Minnesota state lawmakers and their spouses over the weekend, whether any motive is known, and some further details about him.

THOMPSON: With respect to the potential motive, let me say this. There’s been a lot of press coverage, speculation, and discussion about a manifesto. I’ve seen nothing like a Unabomber-style manifesto in his writings. He had many, many notebooks full of plans, lists of names, and surveillance efforts documenting locations, home addresses, and family-member relationships of these elected officials. But I have not seen anything resembling a political screed or manifesto that would clearly identify what motivated him. Obviously, his primary motive was to go out and murder people-elected officials, they were all Democrats. Beyond that, I think it’s just too speculative for anyone who has reviewed these materials to speculate about his ideological or issue-specific motivations. There were some abortion-rights supporters, I believe, on the list, but again, there were dozens and dozens of names across hundreds of pages of documents recovered with his writings on them. REPORTER: Did he confess and give more details after he was apprehended last night? THOMPSON: I’m not going to comment on that at this time. REPORTER: Can you talk about how long this planning and surveillance went on? THOMPSON: It went on for an extensive period of time, the writings appear to have been done over a period of at least months, but anything further than that is speculative. REPORTER: He appeared to be involved with some kind of a home security or professional security operation. I wonder if you have any details about that. And was he familiar to law enforcement? Even though he didn’t appear to have any serious criminal record. THOMPSON: I’ve seen press reporting on his security company-I don’t know anything beyond that or any involvement that has with this case, and I have no knowledge of any prior interactions with law enforcement before this case.

Here’s the full press conference:
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