By: Mary Steurer (ND Monitor)
A North Dakota man was charged Monday with threatening at least one federal official in an email that references the Saturday shooting that killed one Minnesota lawmaker.
About 5 p.m. Sunday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of North Dakota received a threatening email from St. Thomas resident Charles Dalzell, according to a complaint filed Tuesday in federal court by Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Christopher Potts.
In the email — addressed to a U.S. Attorney’s Office employee whom court records identify as “J.P.” — Dalzell claims he was being ignored by federal and state officials, law enforcement and a judge.
“I don’t want this situation to end up like Minnesota over the weekend,” Dalzell wrote, the complaint says.
Vance Boelter faces federal murder charges for the shooting death of Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, on Saturday. He also is accused of shooting state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, who survived.
The complaint against Dalzell does not identify by name any of the individuals Dalzell allegedly threatened and criticized.
Dalzell, born in 1979, has been charged with making interstate threats to injure another person and threatening to assault, kidnap or murder a United States Official.
Dalzell claimed he had been denied money he was awarded in court, and that law enforcement were “attempting to silence him” to conceal corruption by public officials, according to the complaint. Records don’t indicate what court case, if any, Dalzell may have been referring to.
“When law makers make laws and the state doesn’t follow the laws they created it would probably piss some people off right,” Dalzell said in the email, the complaint states.
The filing also alleges Dalzell sent another email to the U.S. Attorney’s Office on Monday disparaging North Dakota elected officials, including the governor.
The complaint states that Dalzell initially contacted the U.S. Attorney’s Office in February 2024 raising concerns about an attorney he hired to assist him with a property issue. Dalzell indicated in the 2024 email he was considering violence against the individual, according to court filings.
FBI agents told him that his emails were “borderline threatening” and that it is against the law to threaten people over the internet, the complaint says. Dalzell told them he did not threaten anyone, that he does not have access to firearms and “if he wanted to go shoot a place up he would not advertise it,” the filing states.
Dalzell used the pseudonym Chuck Miller in his initial communications with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, according to court filings.
The federal court docket for the criminal case does not list an attorney for Dalzell.
Court filings state Dalzell was arrested Monday in St. Thomas in northeastern North Dakota.
He is scheduled to appear in federal court in Fargo on Wednesday afternoon.
