Former U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who lives with his husband and children in Traverse City, said in a social media post that his two 4-year-old twins were interviewed by authorities and he was separated from them for 24 hours because of an anonymous false allegation that he had committed “unspeakable violent crimes” in the past and they might be in danger.
Buttigieg said on a Substack posting on Friday, June 26, that after interviewing the children, the police and Child Protective Services found nothing to substantiate the allegation, which he said the police officer considered politically motivated and potentially a prosecutable offense.
Buttigieg titled the piece, “A Terrible Thing Happened to My Family.”
Michigan State Police confirmed for the Free Press that it had received the anonymous report, in response to a question about Buttigieg’s statement.
“The Michigan State Police and Child Protective Services responded and determined the report was false.”
“I cannot describe the mix of rage and sadness that I feel at the idea that someone brought our children into this,” wrote Buttigieg, a former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and presidential candidate in 2020. “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.
Buttigieg, who also is a potential presidential candidate in 2028, said the incident happened “this week” at his home without mentioning Traverse City by name. He and his husband, Chasten, moved to northwest Michigan to be closer to Chasten’s parents after he took the transportation secretary job with former President Joe Biden.
He and Chasten adopted the twins during Buttigieg’s time as secretary.
In the Substack post, Buttigieg, who said he was “furious,” compared the incident to “swatting,” a hoax where authorities are called with a report of imminent danger happening at a residence or place of business, and police swarm the location in response. The tactic has become more frequently used to harass elected officials.
“Now imagine the same concept, but with Child Protective Services instead of a S.W.A.T. team. Hadn’t thought of that? Me neither, until a few days ago when a police officer and a CPS worker showed up at our home and politely asked to speak with me,” he wrote in the social media post.
Buttigieg said the officer and CPS worker came at a time when Chasten and the children were out running errands, and that an allegation of some sort — which authorities said they could not reveal — had been brought against him. They reportedly told Buttigieg the children would be given a “forensic interview” the following day and that he could not be present, and only after that would he be interviewed and learn the nature of the allegation.
In the meantime, he was reportedly told, he was not allowed to be alone with his children. A suggestion, he said, “which made my stomach turn.”
The police officer and CPS worker said they wanted to see the children before they left the home, waiting until Chasten and the twins returned, according to Buttigieg’s account. Once they did, the authorities left and the children stayed at their grandparents house.
“The twenty-four hours until they returned are among the darkest hours of my life,” Buttigieg wrote. “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.
“Many times over the years,” wrote Buttigieg, “I have been denounced, yelled at, protested, threatened and heckled. I’ve been through political attacks in office, death threats in public life, and rocket attacks in war (as an officer in the Navy Reserve, who served in Afghanistan). But this is the ugliest thing that has happened to me since my career in service began.”
The following day, after the children were interviewed, the police and Child Protective Services worker said nothing of concern had come to light and reportedly told him that an anonymous woman caller, claiming to have met Buttigieg at a conference years before in Alabama, told CPS that Buttigieg had “committed unspeakable violent crimes, and the caller believed my children were still at risk. That was all.”
Authorities then told Buttigieg he could see his kids and be alone with them again, he said.
Buttigieg said he told the officer and CPS worker — whom, he noted, handled their duties with care and professionalism — that he had never even been to the town where the caller had said she met Buttigieg.
“Everyone knows politics is ugly these days. It’s always been ugly, but now it feels more and more like bloodsport,” he wrote. “(T)his is different…. For twenty-four deeply distressing hours, we had no idea what I was accused of or what was about to happen. We could not understand someone abusing the system like this in order to hurt me and my family with an absurd and easily refuted allegation of a horrific crime.
“I don’t know who did this, or exactly what prompted them to try,” he said.
In a confirmation of the report, Michigan State Police spokeswoman Shanon Banner said: “False reports are dangerous and divert law enforcement officers and Child Protective Services workers from responding to legitimate emergencies and protecting vulnerable children and families.”
Contact Todd Spangler: tspangler@freepress.com. Follow him on X @tsspangler. Staff writer Dave Boucher contributed to this story.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Pete Buttigieg faced false claim he was a danger to his children
Reporting by Todd Spangler, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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By Todd Spangler, Detroit Free Press | USA TODAY Network
