Pete Buttigieg Says His Family Was Targeted by a False CPS Report — Police Confirm It

Here's one that's hard to read if you're a parent — or just a decent human being.

Pete Buttigieg, the former U.S. Transportation Secretary and a potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate, went public Friday with a genuinely disturbing story: someone called in a fake report to Child Protective Services claiming his 4-year-old twins were in danger. Police and a CPS worker showed up at his door, and for the next 24 hours, his world was turned upside down.

Here's how it unfolded. An anonymous caller told CPS that they'd spoken to a woman who claimed to have met Buttigieg at a conference in Alabama — where, she allegedly said, he confessed to committing "unspeakable violent crimes" against children. That was the entire basis of the report. Buttigieg later told police he had never even been to the town in Alabama where the supposed meeting happened.

But here's the thing about CPS — once a report comes in, the system has to respond. That meant his kids, Penelope and Gus, were taken to stay with their grandparents so they could undergo separate, hour-long forensic interviews the next morning with strangers, with no family allowed in the room. Buttigieg wasn't permitted to be alone with his own children while that process played out.

He described the 24 hours waiting for them to come home as "among the darkest hours of my life."

After the interviews, the investigating officer told Buttigieg point-blank that he believed the report was politically motivated and that it would not be referred to a prosecutor. The CPS worker said she found nothing to substantiate the allegation. Michigan State Police later confirmed to NPR that they had received the anonymous report and determined it was false.

Buttigieg called it a form of "swatting" — that's when someone makes a fake emergency call to send law enforcement to a person's home as a harassment tactic — except in this case, the child welfare system was weaponized instead of a SWAT team. He said it's the "ugliest thing" that has happened to him in his entire career in public service — and that's a career that includes death threats, rocket attacks while deployed in Afghanistan, and years of high-profile political attacks.

He also didn't shy away from the likely motive. The incident happened during Pride Month, just days after he shared Father's Day photos of his family on social media. Buttigieg is openly gay and has been married to his husband Chasten since 2018. The couple adopted their twins in 2021.

What makes this particularly striking: the response was bipartisan. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, a Republican from Wisconsin, posted in support saying the same thing had happened to his own family.

Why does this matter beyond Buttigieg specifically? Because this kind of abuse — using the legal system as a weapon — isn't new, and it's getting more common. Swatting incidents targeting politicians and public figures have been on the rise across the country. And unlike a prank call to 911, a false CPS report pulls children directly into the chaos. It's also, notably, a crime in Michigan — punishable by up to four years in prison.

No arrests have been made. No one knows publicly who made the call. The investigation into the false report itself appears to be ongoing, or at minimum unresolved.