US officials have been targeted by heavily armed raids based on fake police reports
Police in the US capital announced on Monday that someone had falsely reported a shooting at Judge Tanya Chutkan’s home. She is the judge overseeing the federal trial of former US President Donald Trump on charges related to the 2020 election.
The Metropolitan Police Department received a call around 10 pm on Sunday and sent officers to Chutkan’s Washington, DC home, a spokesperson told reporters. They quickly established that the shooting had never happened.
The incident comes less than a week after anonymous bomb threats were made against officials and government buildings in eight US states – Alaska, Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota and Mississippi – all of which turned out to be unfounded.
Attorney General Merrick Garland on Friday called the threats “deeply disturbing,” unacceptable and threatening “the fabric of our democracy,” according to AP.
Chutkan was appointed to the bench in 2014 by President Barack Obama. She is overseeing special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of Trump on federal charges of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election. Trump has denounced the case as a politically motivated attempt to block him from the 2024 ballot.
Read more