Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s children were taken away from him after a tip from someone who turned out to be “mentally unstable,” according to police records.
Last month, the 44-year-old’s four-year-old twins, Penelope and Gus, were separated from him and his husband after an anonymous caller told Child Protective Services that he had committed “unspeakable violent crimes” and warned that the children could still be at risk.
It has now transpired that authorities later deemed the source possibly untrustworthy, due to her potential mental instability.
The previously unreported police records were obtained by The Washington Post, which also interviewed the apparent complainant, who, the paper suggested, had a less-than-compelling case. Child welfare experts who reviewed the documents at The Post’s request said they illuminate a flawed process made worse by poor judgment and a lack of communication between agencies in two states.
Indiana child welfare authorities who fielded a tip with “very limited information” did not pass along the caller’s name when notifying officials in Michigan, where Buttigieg, who last week emerged as the frontrunner in an Emerson College poll among a crowded list of possible Democratic presidential nominees, now lives.
Michigan police also waited six days after approaching Buttigieg to even attempt to identify the caller.
By then, Buttigieg, the first openly gay Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate, had already gone public in a June Substack post, calling the ordeal “the ugliest thing that has happened to me since my career in service began.”
He said authorities told him he couldn’t be alone with his 4-year-old twins until they could be interviewed away from their parents, sending the children to stay with grandparents. He called the 24-hour separation “among the darkest hours of my life.”
Vivek Sankaran, a University of Michigan law professor and child advocacy expert, said he was troubled that state police approached Buttigieg with such a vague allegation lacking any indication children were in imminent danger. “At the very least, it’s incredibly poor investigative work. I would even say reckless, in light of how harmful this is for the family,” Sankaran said. “It should scare all of us.”
The new records reveal just how thin the tip was. Nine days after Indiana’s initial call, a Michigan child welfare worker learned from Indiana police that the possible source of the allegation was a “mentally unstable woman in Indiana.” Only then did Michigan State Police contact Indiana counterparts to pursue her identity.
An Indiana investigator later found a Facebook post in which the same woman urged people not to vote for Buttigieg and referenced her accusation weeks before she ever contacted authorities. Reached by phone, the woman confirmed making reports about Buttigieg but couldn’t answer basic questions about her own accusations, and accused a Post reporter of helping Buttigieg cover something up.
The Michigan attorney general’s office has now opened an investigation into how the allegation was handled. “Common sense would have shown that this targeted report plainly lacked credibility on its face,” said spokeswoman Kimberly Bush. “Before children are separated from their families, due diligence should be exercised to ensure some nexus exists between the source and the family.” Indiana State Police confirmed a separate investigation into possible false reporting.
Buttigieg told authorities his family has received “many threats,” including death threats, since he and husband Chasten adopted their twins in 2021. “This has been a painful and infuriating situation for the family,” spokesman Sean Manning said. “They are in touch with Michigan authorities, seeking answers and accountability for what happened.”
Law professor Dale Margolin Cecka, who directs Albany Law’s Family Violence Litigation Clinic, said the case exposes a system with no accountability. “This case highlights everything that is wrong with a system of reporting and investigating where no one has accountability,” she said. “And a family is traumatized because of it.”
Buttigieg wrote that he’s still grappling with what the ordeal means. “Even though the accusation was absurdly and obviously false, and was promptly rejected by law enforcement, I still worry about the harm it has done,” he wrote.
“I worry about how anyone, even in today’s world, could fail to respect the absolutely fundamental principle that whatever you think about someone in politics, you leave people’s kids out of it.”
The Michigan attorney general’s office has launched a probe into the allegation against Buttigieg and how it was handled, a spokeswoman told The Post.
