Pete Buttigieg says his family was subjected to a false anonymous allegation claiming the former Transportation Secretary was a danger to his four-year-old twins.
In a post published on his Substack, Buttigieg said a Michigan State Police officer and a child protective services worker arrived at his home in Traverse City in response to the report.
He said authorities set up forensic interviews for his children and told him he could not be alone with them until those interviews had been completed.
Buttigieg described the episode, which unfolded over roughly 24 hours, as “among the darkest hours of my life.”
Michigan State Police told The Associated Press in a statement that they had received an “anonymous report” and that both police and child protective services “responded and determined the report was false.”
According to Buttigieg, investigators later told him the caller had alleged that he confessed years ago to violent crimes during a chance encounter in Alabama.
The former presidential candidate said he had never visited the town where that alleged meeting was supposed to have taken place.
Buttigieg said police informed him the allegation would not be sent to prosecutors and that they believed it was politically motivated, while Child Protective Services found no evidence to support the claim.
Pete Buttigieg (pictured with kids and husband Chasten) claims he was the target of a false anonymous report alleging that the former Transportation Secretary posed a danger to his four-year-old twin children
According to Buttigieg in a post on his Substack , a Michigan State Police officer and a child protective services worker came to his home in Traverse City
‘I cannot describe the mix of rage and sadness that I feel at the idea that someone brought our children into this,’ writes Buttigieg.
‘They are four years old. Four. They do not know or care what a Democrat or a Republican is.’
Buttigieg, who is widely viewed as a potential Democratic presidential candidate in 2028, has long been the target of anti-LGBTQ attacks.
In recent years, conservative activists and some Republican officials have opposed efforts to portray same-sex parents as ordinary families in schools and public life. June – widely recognized as Pride Month – is Strong Families Month in Alabama, intended to coincide with Father´s Day.
Governor Kay Ivey´s proclamation says fathers are ‘the head of the household’ and ‘homes led by a father and mother provide children with the structure and discipline necessary to succeed throughout life.’
Buttigieg wrote that the incident occurred soon after he shared photos of his family online for Father´s Day.
He drew criticism from some Republicans for taking paternity leave after he and his husband, Chasten, adopted their twins while he was serving in the Biden administration.
Buttigieg also wrote that he has faced death threats during his career.
Authorities arranged forensic interviews for his twins and instructed him not to be alone with them until the interviews were complete
‘But this is the ugliest thing that has happened to me since my career in service began,’ he wrote.
Public officials from across the political spectrum have increasingly been targeted by swatting, which is the act of making a false call to emergency services to prompt a response at a particular address.
The goal is to get authorities, particularly a SWAT team, to show up. Law enforcement agencies have warned that the incidents divert resources from other pressing tasks and pose risks to both law enforcement and the victims.
Buttigieg said the incident reflected a broader escalation in political attacks.
‘Everyone knows politics is ugly these days,’ he wrote. ‘It´s always been ugly, but now it feels more and more like bloodsport.’
‘Even so, this is different.’
The one-time presidential hopeful has been happily married to his husband Chasten since 2018.
They adopted Joseph August ‘Gus’ and Penelope Rose in 2021, while they were living in Washington, DC and Buttigieg was serving as President Joe Biden’s Transportation Secretary.
Buttigieg, who ran in the Democratic primary in the 2020 presidential election, got married in 2018. Three years later the couple adopted the twins at birth.
They now regularly share photos to social media of their family, but kept things a bit more private while Buttigieg was an administration official.
Buttigieg was Kamala Harris’ first pick as running mate in the 2024 presidential election, but she went in a different direction because of the optics of his sexuality paired with her gender and race.
He ‘would have been an ideal partner – if I were a straight white man,’ Harris wrote in a portion of her memoir of the presidential race.
The former vice president claims that picking a gay man would have been ‘asking a lot of America’ at the time.
‘But we were already asking a lot of America: to accept a woman, a Black woman, a Black woman married to a Jewish man,’ she said.
‘Part of me wanted to say, Screw it, let’s just do it. But knowing what was at stake, it was too big of a risk,’ she wrote. ‘And I think Pete also knew that – to our mutual sadness.’
Harris instead chose Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her vice presidential nominee. The pair would go on to lose every single battleground state to Trump and JD Vance.
