Minneapolis's top prosecutor has billed taxpayers more than half a million dollars for personal bodyguards since late 2023, even as she publicly accused residents worried about rising crime of "fear mongering."
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, 62, began receiving private security from a firm called Relative Intel, LLC in November 2023, less than a year after she took office. Supplier payment records obtained by Alpha News and reported by the Daily Mail show the county paid the firm a total of $513,223 through August 28, 2026, a figure roughly $88,000 higher than the $425,000 the county itself has acknowledged spending on Moriarty's detail.
No one in county government has publicly explained what specific threats justified the arrangement. Moriarty's office has not offered a direct comment on the spending or the gap between the county's stated total and the payment records. Hennepin County confirmed only that it entered "an agreement with Relative Intel, LLC to provide personal security services" and that "this service is used by the County Attorney."
The financial trail tells its own story. In 2023, when the arrangement began partway through the year, Hennepin County paid Relative Intel $10,950. By 2024, the tab had climbed to $103,825. In 2025, it reached $183,875, and a separate line in the records shows $214,573 spent through August 28 of that year alone.
County records describe two contracts. The first, signed in October 2023, covered services through December 2024 at a value of $115,000. The second, beginning in January 2025 and running through December 31 of that year, carried a price tag of $500,000, more than four times the original deal.
Attorney Chris Madel, a frequent Moriarty critic who has clashed with her repeatedly, did not hold back about the contradiction between her public posture and her private arrangements.
"Mary Moriarty spends her time telling Minneapolis residents not to worry about crime while spending $513,000 to make sure she doesn't have to worry about it herself."
Madel added a sharper point.
"That's not leadership. That's hypocrisy with a security detail."
Madel also noted that other Hennepin County officials who have received "genuine death threats" are not afforded taxpayer-funded security. The county has not addressed why Moriarty's situation warranted a different standard.
The security spending might draw less scrutiny if Moriarty's record on public safety inspired confidence. It does not. On September 2, a 35-year-old man named Carlton Johnson II opened fire at the Loring Towers apartment complex in downtown Minneapolis, killing two neighbors and wounding five others. Police officers arrived within two minutes and killed Johnson at the scene.
Court documents paint a picture of a man whose violent behavior was well documented before the shooting. Johnson was facing eviction. He had threatened a fellow resident with a gun in the months before the attack. At least one woman who had a child with Johnson filed a restraining order against him in 2023, after he allegedly threatened to kill her in profanity-laden text messages. Those threats came after she told police he had sexually assaulted her two years earlier.
On June 25, Minneapolis police investigated an encounter at Johnson's apartment complex in which he displayed a weapon. Officers noted he held a legal permit to carry. Moriarty's office reviewed the case and decided not to file charges, citing "insufficient evidence to prove a charge beyond a reasonable doubt." Her office also declined to pursue an emergency order to remove Johnson's weapon.
Weeks later, Johnson carried out the shooting.
Interim Police Chief Bill Peterson defended the department's response at the time, saying officers had only recently become aware of many of the incidents in Johnson's history. But the decision not to charge, and not to seek removal of his firearm, belonged to Moriarty's office.
Moriarty's public statements on crime in Minneapolis have consistently minimized the concerns of the people who live there. She characterized residents' worries about public safety as "fear mongering." In December 2024, she pushed back against President Trump's claims that Somali gangs were terrorizing the city, a rebuttal that, whatever its merits on the specific claim, fit a broader pattern of dismissing alarm about crime in her jurisdiction.
All the while, she was protected by a taxpayer-funded security detail whose cost ballooned year over year. The contrast is difficult to square. If crime in Minneapolis is manageable enough that worried residents are simply fear-mongering, why does the county attorney need a half-million-dollar private security contract? And if the threats to her safety are real enough to justify that spending, what does that say about the safety of ordinary Minneapolis residents who cannot bill Hennepin County for bodyguards?
Moriarty's tenure has drawn controversy on multiple fronts. She was probed by federal officials after ordering prosecutors to factor in a defendant's race when offering plea deals. She spent $150,000 of taxpayer money on a public relations firm. She negotiated what critics called a lenient sentence for a double murderer. She pursued prosecutions of police officers while, in a separate case, letting a progressive public official off lightly after the official was accused of keying six Teslas.
Her personal life has also drawn attention. Her longtime partner, Jen Westmoreland, is a progressive activist and former Hopkins School Board member.
In August 2025, Moriarty announced she would not seek re-election. Her term runs through January 4, 2027. The second Relative Intel contract, valued at $500,000, was set to run through December 31, 2025, meaning taxpayers may still be on the hook for security costs through the end of that agreement, and possibly beyond.
The $88,000 gap between what the county says it spent ($425,000) and what the supplier payment records show ($513,223) remains unexplained. Alpha News obtained both sets of figures, and neither Moriarty nor the county has addressed the discrepancy publicly.
Elected officials sometimes face genuine threats that justify protective measures. But those measures demand transparency, especially when the official in question has built a public persona around telling constituents their safety concerns are overblown. Moriarty has offered neither an explanation for the spending nor a justification for the escalating costs, just silence, shielded behind a security detail the public is paying for but was never asked to approve.
When a prosecutor needs a half-million dollars in bodyguards to feel safe in the city she oversees, the residents she dismissed as fear-mongers have already made their point for them.
