Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was the victim of a swatting attempt during Christmas celebrations at her Georgia home, the Republican congresswoman said on social media. She said it was the eighth such incident in which she had been targeted.
Police in Rome, Ga., verified that the call was not a legitimate report of a crime and did not send officers, department spokesperson Kelly Madden told the Associated Press.
Rep. Brandon Williams (R-N.Y.) also posted on social media that he had been the target of a swatting attempt on Christmas Day, and shared a photo with law enforcement officers, who he said “left with homemade cookies and spiced nuts.” He later said that U.S. Capitol Police and local law enforcement were investigating.
Swatting is when a caller makes a false report that leads authorities to believe a major crime is happening at a particular location, with the intent to draw SWAT teams there.
Celebrities, officials, journalists, media organizations, activists and everyday citizens have been the targets of this type of stunt.
In 2017, police in Wichita who were responding to a false call about a hostage situation arrived at the home of 28-year-old Andrew Finch and fatally shot him after he opened the front door. Finch did not know the people behind the swatting call, a court later heard.
In 2020, a 60-year-old Tennessee man died of a heart attack after armed police surrounded his home while responding to a false report that someone had been shot at that address. The call was made as part of an attempt to get the man to give up his Twitter handle, federal prosecutors said.
Greene wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, that the Christmas Day swatting attempt happened “with my family here.” A man in New York called a Georgia suicide hotline and falsely claimed that he had shot his girlfriend at Greene’s address and was going to kill himself, Madden told the Associated Press, confirming that Green has been the target of about eight swatting attempts.
Police in Rome, Ga., and Cayuga County, N.Y., did not immediately respond to inquiries Monday night.
“My local police are the GREATEST and shouldn’t have to deal with this,” Greene wrote.
She also criticized the FBI for not doing more to prevent swatting attempts against her. “Swatting is extremely dangerous and people have been killed as a result from swatting calls,” she tweeted.
Greene, a vocal supporter of former president Donald Trump, has built a reputation as a far-right firebrand within Congress. Before assuming office in 2021, she openly promoted conspiracy theories — which she later renounced in part — and made comments on social media suggesting that some mass shootings were staged by gun-control advocates, that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated by government forces and that a Jewish cabal had sparked a deadly wildfire with a space beam.