Residents of McHenry — a conservative, close-knit agricultural community — said the narrative of the tragedy that Trump and others promoted never made much sense to them. A small town's tragedy, distorted by Trump's megaphone:
From left, Larry Erickson, Sue Bakko, and Bob Bailey having breakfast at the Hunting Shack Cafe in McHenry, N.D., on May 24, 2023.
That claim, made weeks before the midterm elections, ignited a brief national political firestorm. Republican politicians and right-wing media figures claimed that Brandt had been inspired by President Joe Biden’s recent warnings about “extremism” in the Republican Party. They complained that news media coverage of political violence willfully ignored instances when the assailants were Democrats.
Late last month, the murder charge against Brandt was downgraded to manslaughter, which carries a sentence of up to 10 years in prison. He agreed on May 18 to plead guilty. Ellingson’s family did not comment. Brandt, through his attorney, Mark Friese, declined an interview. The crowd included Ellingson, who had come to the festival with his family and stayed behind with his brother after their parents drove back to nearby Grace City. And it included Brandt, who came from a locally prominent family that had lived in McHenry since the early 20th century. His father and uncle had shot the immense trophy elks that looked down upon patrons from the walls of the bar.
But the declaration appears to have mischaracterized the 911 call. And the prosecutor never presented evidence that showed Brandt told officers that he ran into the teen because of the argument or that he believed he was part of an extremist group. Five days after the incident, a captain in the North Dakota State Highway Patrol told reporters that his agency had concluded the killing was “not political in nature at all.
Both men were intoxicated. Brandt’s family and Friese say Brandt has been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, which Friese argued was a relevant factor in the case. An autopsy by the state forensic medical examiner ruled the cause of death as “accidental.”In the days after the episode, several local news outlets published articles. As is typical with early reports, those first stories relied heavily on the sparse details provided by law enforcement records.
Pirro blamed Biden, who she said “is the one who started this extremist hate” when he made a speech about the perils of far-right extremism earlier that month. On Twitter, Greene posted a clip of Biden referencing “extreme MAGA Republicans,” adding that Ellingson was “executed in cold blood by a Democrat political terrorist because of rhetoric like this.”
Brandt’s reference to extremists was similarly met with surprise in McHenry, where both residents and law enforcement officials profess to know little about such groups. The county sheriff’s records do mention one previously unreported incident: In October, a long-shuttered local school was found to have been vandalized, its interior walls spray-painted with the stenciled logo of Patriot Front, a white nationalist group.
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