The White House on Monday became the latest victim of a growing US problem of “swatting”: the summoning of large numbers of law enforcement personnel and other first responders to a hoax emergency incident.
Multiple Washington DC fire and ambulance crews rushed to the White House following an emergency call that was received at 7.03am, a spokesperson for District of Columbia fire and emergency medical services said. Joe Biden was not at the residence, and the call was later traced to a fake number.
The spokesperson said a “significant” number of personnel had reached the site when the call, which reported a fire and a person trapped, was determined to be false a little more than 15 minutes after it was received.
The Secret Service referred requests for comment to the DC emergency services. CNN reported details of the dispatch radio call reporting a fire at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, made at 7.04am, one minute after the phone call.
The criminal act of swatting has become prevalent in recent weeks, with an increasing number of politicians, judges and other prominent officials targeted.
Among the most serious incidents was eight days ago when police responded to a false call of a shooting at the Washington DC home of Tanya Chutkan, the judge overseeing the federal election subversion case against Donald Trump.
The Metropolitan police department quickly figured the call was a hoax, but not before dispatching several units to the residence of Chutkan, who has received several other threats since being assigned to Trump’s case last year.
Chutkan was the second judge in charge of a Trump trial to have been targeted this month. A bomb threat against Arthur Engoron, the presiding judge in the former president’s civil financial fraud trial in New York, was also considered to be a swatting incident.
Other recent prank incidents have been aimed at three members of Congress, the Florida Republican senator Rick Scott, the Georgia Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Maine’s secretary of state Shenna Bellows, who removed Trump’s name from the 2024 presidential ballot last month for inciting the January 6 insurrection.
Merrick Garland, the attorney general, described swatting as “deeply disturbing” in remarks before a private meeting with justice department officials this month to address violent crime.
“These threats of violence are unacceptable. They threaten the fabric of our democracy,” he said.
Biden is set to return to the White House on Monday afternoon after spending much of the weekend at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland, and attending a Martin Luther King Jr Day commemoration in Philadelphia on Monday morning.
The Associated Press contributed reporting
