Minnesota Governor Tim Walz voted unanimously with his state's board of pardons to grant clemency to a Laotian national who repeatedly raped a 10-year-old girl over two years — and then the state's flagship newspaper praised him for it, comparing the convicted child rapist to January 6 Capitol defendants while omitting the victim's age from its coverage entirely.
Tou Lue Vang, a Laotian national who was convicted of felony sexual assault in 2006 for crimes committed between 2002 and 2004 against a child, was facing deportation when Minnesota's Board of Pardons — composed of Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, and state Chief Justice Natalie Hudson — voted unanimously on June 10 to grant him clemency. Vang had dismissed his repeated assaults on the child as a "minor thing" and had attempted to pay his victim for her silence. The Minnesota Star Tribune's opinion columnist Rochelle Olson ran a piece praising Walz for his "refusal to back down" from the pardon — without once mentioning that the victim was a minor, that Vang raped her multiple times over a two-year period, or that Vang had previously tried to buy her silence. The column did, however, find space to compare Vang's crimes to the January 6 Capitol riot.
"The Minnesota Star Tribune is cheering on Tim Walz protecting an illegal alien monster who raped a 10-year-old girl. No one should read this depraved rag. They are sick." — House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN)
The column's central rhetorical move — comparing a man who repeatedly sexually assaulted a child to participants in the January 6 Capitol protest — drew immediate and bipartisan condemnation. The Star Tribune defended the piece by noting the pardon had received unanimous support from a board that includes a Republican-appointed chief justice, and emphasized that the victim herself had submitted a letter to the pardon board supporting clemency for Vang. Neither point changes the basic character of the column: a major newspaper framed the repeated rape of a 10-year-old as a political story about a governor showing courage, while choosing not to tell its readers how old the victim was.
The pardon ultimately proved moot. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on July 10 that Vang had been deported to Laos despite Walz's clemency, with Rubio noting that Vang had admitted to his crimes, dismissed them as trivial, and attempted to silence his victim with money. The administration made clear it views the pardon as emblematic of a broader pattern of Democratic officials prioritizing the interests of illegal immigrant criminal defendants over American victims — particularly children.
Tim Walz was the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 2024, selected by Kamala Harris. Minnesota's Board of Pardons is one of only a handful of state-level executive clemency bodies that includes the state attorney general and chief justice alongside the governor. The board's unanimous vote means Ellison and Hudson also voted to grant clemency to Vang. Secretary Rubio's deportation order reflects the administration's position that federal immigration enforcement authority supersedes state clemency actions for non-citizen criminal defendants subject to removal orders.
A ten-year-old girl was repeatedly raped. The man who did it called it a minor thing and tried to buy her silence. Twenty years later, the governor of Minnesota voted to pardon him, and the state's largest newspaper praised that decision while omitting the victim's age from its coverage. The Star Tribune's defense — that the column simply agreed with a unanimous bipartisan board — does not explain why its columnist chose not to tell readers that the victim was a child. Some omissions are not editorial judgment. They are choices that reveal priorities.