By Jack Phillips
Contributing Writer
Several of President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees were targeted by “bomb threats” and “swatting” attempts on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, a Trump spokeswoman said.
In a statement issued on social media, Trump transition team spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said that unnamed Cabinet nominees and administration officials were subjected to “violent, un-American threats to their lives and those who live with them.”
While the statement provided no details on who was targeted by the bomb threats and swatting attempts, Leavitt said that law enforcement officials acted quickly to mitigate the problem. Other details were not given in Leavitt’s statement.
“President Trump and the entire transition team are grateful for their swift action,” she said, referring to law enforcement officials.
It’s not clear if a police report was filed or if an investigation is underway.
Trump and the incoming administration “are focused on doing the work of uniting our country by ensuring a safe and prosperous future,” Leavitt also said. “With President Trump as our example, dangerous acts of intimidation and violence will not deter us.”
Neither Trump nor Vice President-elect JD Vance have commented on her statement. Neither has any other of the president-elect’s nominees for key Cabinet positions.
Swatting refers to the action of making a prank call to emergency services such as law enforcement officials in a bid to bring about the dispatch of a large number of armed police officers to an address.
Last year, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, said on social media that she was the victim of several swatting attempts, including on Christmas Day last year.
“I was just swatted. This is like the eighth time. On Christmas with my family here. My local police are the GREATEST and shouldn’t have to deal with this,” Greene wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter, at the time.
During the campaign, Trump faced multiple attempts on his life.
In July, he barely survived an assassination attempt while he was speaking at a rally in Pennsylvania, with a bullet clipping his right ear. The gunman, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, was shot and killed by a responding Secret Service sniper.
Two months later, in mid-September, the FBI and law enforcement officials arrested a man who had camped outside his Florida golf course for hours, waiting with an SKS-style rifle. Prosecutors say the suspect, Ryan Wesley Routh, wrote a letter detailing his intention to assassinate Trump because he pulled the United States out of the Iran nuclear deal in 2015.
Lawmakers confirmed that Trump was receiving presidential-level protection from the Secret Service at the time.
Trump has not publicly indicated whether he wants to revamp the Secret Service, which has been beset by controversy in the wake of the July assassination attempt that also saw its former director, Kimberly Cheatle, resign from office after an hours-long congressional hearing.
The president-elect has not revealed who he would choose as the agency’s director, although he announced he would nominate South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem to head the Department of Homeland Security in a statement issued earlier this month. The agency oversees the Secret Service.
Trump is due to be inaugurated on Jan. 20. Congress is scheduled to certify the Nov. 5 election results on Jan. 6.