Democratic star Pete Buttigieg is speaking out after an anonymous caller contacted Child Protective Services about his family and made horrific false accusations against the former transportation secretary.
The unidentified caller claimed they had spoken to a woman who had met Buttigieg years ago, who claimed he had committed “unspeakable violent crimes” and warned his 4-year-old twin children could still be at risk.
The incident, which Buttigieg compared to a swatting incident, resulted in a CPS worker and a police officer showing up at his door.
He called it the “ugliest thing” that has ever happened to him in his career in public service and shared how the allegation put his family through a shocking ordeal that required him to be supervised around his own kids while it was investigated.
Buttigieg, who is seen as a likely 2028 presidential contender, opened up about what his family has been going through in recent days in a lengthy post on Substack, in which he wrote that the officer made clear he believed the incident was politically motivated.
“Everyone knows politics is ugly these days. It’s always been ugly, but now it feels more and more like bloodsport,” Buttigieg wrote in his post titled “A Terrible Thing Happened to My Family.”
“Cruelty, lies, and even deadly violence have been directed at political figures across the ideological spectrum. Generally everyone agrees this has to stop, even as our country (and public figures) get all too used to it,” he continued.
Buttigieg rose to national political prominence when he ran for president in 2020 and then served as former President Joe Biden’s transportation secretary. He has been married to his husband Chasten since 2018. They adopted their newborn twins, Joseph, nicknamed Gus, and Penelope, in 2021.
The 44-year-old wrote about how he had been the victim of a swatting attempt when he was serving in Biden’s Cabinet, but he could not imagine a similar situation involving CPS until it happened a few days ago when the worker and officer knocked on his door.
“They explained that there had been an allegation against me, that it concerned our four-year-old twins, and that a forensic interview had been arranged for the children the following day,” he wrote. ”I could not be present at the children’s interview, nor could any family member sit in. Afterwards, they would come back and interview me. And only then would they tell me anything about the nature of the allegation."
Buttigieg wrote that he was told he could not be alone around his children until the interview took place the next day, which made his stomach turn.
“They asked if I had relatives nearby or could perhaps stay at a hotel for the night,” he shared.
In the end, after Chasten returned home with the kids from their day at summer camp, they agreed the children would stay at their grandparents’ house after a family dinner that night.
“The twenty-four hours until they returned are among the darkest hours of my life. I tried to get my head around the idea that I had been accused of something so serious that I couldn’t be alone around my own children, and had consented to have them interviewed by strangers, without my knowing where the accusation had come from or even what it contained,” he wrote.
Buttigieg said he had been “denounced, yelled at, protested, threatened, and heckled,” as well as faced political attacks while in office, but had never seen his own children affected before.
During his own interview, he said, the officer asked him a series of questions including whether he had been to the Alabama town where the woman claimed she had met him. He had not.
Buttigieg said the officer made clear that he believed the accusations were politically motivated and would not refer the case over to a prosecutor, as nothing in the interview with his children had caused concern.
“After the officer spoke, the CPS worker likewise indicated she had not found anything to substantiate the allegation, though her process would take a bit longer to be formally completed. I no longer needed to avoid being around my children unsupervised,” he wrote.
Buttigieg wrote that the incident was different than the ugly politics people have become used to.
“Now our family is left to deal with the aftermath. I worry about any unseen effects this had on our kids, on Chasten and me, and on the rest of our family. 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.
“Chasten and I worry about who else might try to do this kind of thing, to us or to others. And at the most basic level, 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,” he added.
Buttigieg described himself as a reasonable man but said he could not describe the mix of “rage and sadness” he feels that someone brought his children into it.
“They are four years old. Four. They do not know or care what a Democrat or a Republican is. They don’t know how politics works. They don’t know about hate. They should be worrying about what kind of ice cream they’re getting this afternoon, not why they are being brought into a meeting with a grownup asking strange questions or why their Papa is suddenly unavailable to read them a bedtime story. For God’s sake, they are just kids,” he said.
He vowed that if there was anything they could do to press charges, they would and warned not to mess with someone’s kids. He also promised to keep speaking out on the causes they believe in.
Since leaving office at the start of the Trump administration, Buttigieg has been a fierce critic of the president and MAGA while campaigning in support of Democratic candidates across the country.
