Maine secretary of state targeted in ‘swatting’ call after removing Trump from ballot
A fake emergency call to police resulted in officers responding Friday night to the home of Maine’s secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, just a day after she removed Donald Trump from the state’s presidential primary ballot under the US constitution’s insurrection clause.
She becomes the latest elected politician to become a target of swatting, which involves making a phone call to emergency services with the intent that a large first responder presence, including Swat teams, will show up at a residence.
Bellows was not home when the swatting call was made, and responding officers found nothing suspicious.
Suspects in swatting cases are being arrested and charged as states contemplate stronger penalties.
Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene was the target of a swatting attempt at her Georgia residence on Christmas morning, the Republican representative and local police said.
A man in New York called the Georgia suicide hotline claiming he had shot his girlfriend at Greene’s home and was going to kill himself. Police said investigators were working to identify the caller and build a criminal case.
Another New York man was sentenced in August to three months in prison for making threatening phone calls to Greene’s office in Washington DC.
While the Maine department of public safety did not share a suspected motive for the swatting attempt against Bellows, she had no doubts it stemmed from her decision to remove Trump from the ballot as he seeks a second presidency in 2024. The swatting attempt came after a conservative activist posted her home address on social
media.
“And it was posted in anger and with violent intent by those who have been extending threatening communications toward me, my family and my office,” Bellows told the Associated Press in a phone call Saturday.
A call was made to emergency services from an unknown man saying he had broken into a house in Manchester, according to the Maine public safety department.
The address the man gave was Bellows’s home. Bellows and her husband were away for the holiday weekend. Maine state police responded to what the public safety department said ultimately turned out to be a swatting call.
Police conducted an exterior sweep of the house and then checked inside at Bellows’s request. Nothing suspicious was found, and police continue to investigate.
“The Maine state police is working with our law enforcement partners to provide special attention to any and all appropriate locations,” the public safety statement said.
Bellows said the intimidation factors won’t work: “Here’s what I’m not doing differently. I’m doing my job to uphold the constitution, the rule of law.”
Beyond Bellows and Greene, other high-profile politicians who have been swatting call targets include US senator Rick Scott of Florida, Boston mayor Michelle Wu and Ohio attorney general Dave Yost.
The Trump campaign said it would appeal Bellows’s decision to Maine’s state courts, and Bellows suspended her ruling until that court system rules on the case.
The Colorado supreme court earlier this month removed Trump from that state’s ballot, a decision that also was stayed until the US supreme court decides whether he would be barred under the insurrection clause, a civil war-era provision which prohibits those who “engaged in insurrection” from holding office.