Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Friday that he and his family in Michigan were targeted by a “false report” to state authorities claiming he was a danger to his 4-year-old twins.
Michigan State Police confirmed in a statement that they had received an anonymous report regarding Buttigieg. State police and Child Protective Services then responded and “determined the report was false,” the statement said.
Buttigieg, a Cabinet official in the Biden administration and a potential 2028 presidential candidate, wrote in a Substack post that a police officer and Child Protective Services worker appeared at his home “a few days ago” following an allegation that had been made against him involving his children.
He said his children were removed from the home he shares with his husband, Chasten, before the twins went through separate forensic interviews the next morning. Buttigieg said he was then interviewed as part of the investigation.
During that interview, Buttigieg said, an officer told him that an anonymous caller had reported him to CPS, with the caller saying “that he had spoken to a woman who claimed to have met me at a conference several years ago in Alabama, where she said I told her that I had committed unspeakable violent crimes, and the caller believed my children were still at risk.”
Buttigieg said he told the officer he had never been to the town in Alabama.
“Then the officer made clear that he believed this was politically motivated, and said it would not be referred to a prosecutor,” Buttigieg wrote. “Nothing in the forensic interview with the children, which was conducted by trained personnel, had led to concerns.”
Buttigieg said he was apart from his children for 24 hours.
He said the CPS worker involved in the case had also indicated that she had not found anything to substantiate the allegation, but that the process to formally complete the investigation would take a bit more time.
The statement from Michigan State Police called false reports “dangerous,” adding that they “divert law enforcement officers and Child Protective Services workers from responding to legitimate emergencies and protecting vulnerable children and families.”
Buttigieg said the incident was “the ugliest thing that has happened to me since my career in service began.”
“For twenty-four deeply distressing hours, we had no idea what I was accused of or what was about to happen,” Buttigieg wrote. “We could not understand someone abusing the system like this in order to hurt me and my family with an absurd and easily refuted allegation of a horrific crime.”
He commended the CPS workers and officers involved for their “admirable” work, but wrote that “in this case, their time and resources were wasted in a cruel, politically motivated hoax that harmed our family.”
Buttigieg, a Navy veteran and the first openly gay Cabinet member in U.S. history to be confirmed by the Senate, noted that it was “not lost on” him that the incident came during Pride Month and that it happened “soon after we shared photos of our family on social media for Father’s Day.”
While Buttigieg has not confirmed a 2028 presidential run, early polls have suggested he is among the top prospective candidates for the Democratic Party, alongside former Vice President Kamala Harris and California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The “false report” against Buttigieg and his family comes amid a proliferation of so-called swatting incidents targeting government officials and politicians across the U.S. in recent years.
In swatting incidents, an anonymous 911 caller makes a false report of imminent danger in an attempt to draw a large, potentially hostile, law enforcement presence to someone’s home or business. The incidents can sometimes escalate and lead to physical harm.
Last month, the Virginia home of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett was the subject of a swatting incident after a caller who identified themselves to police as a neighbor reported having heard gunshots at Barrett’s address.
In November, at least 11 elected Republican lawmakers in Indiana reported being targets of swatting incidents and threats over pressure to approve a new congressional map in the state.
