Police rushed to the Fairfax County, Va., home of Supreme Court Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett Wednesday night after a caller claimed gunshots had been heard. Officers arrived, coordinated with Supreme Court Police personnel assigned to the residence, determined that the report was false, and cleared the scene without additional police resources. Fairfax County Police confirmed the call came through the department's non-emergency line at 9:02 p.m. From Blaze Media:
A recording posted by a self-identified Washington, D.C., photographer purportedly documents a police dispatcher ordering a police response to the home of a "high-priority resident of the county."
The dispatcher informs the officer that personnel have been unable to call the complainant back, indicating that it may be a swatting incident.
"Units responding to suspicious noise. Be advised, we have not been able to get an answer on call back to the complainant's phone number. Unknown if it's going to be a swatting situation," she says.
"Just made contact with security that's on scene," a male officer says. "They should be outside in an Explorer. He said he hasn't heard anything. We're just going to meet up with him first, just to go over anything."
The photographer reported that the victim of the swatting incident was Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
Call it what it is.
Swatting isn't some childish prank from a basement coward with too much internet access and too little conscience. It's a deliberate attempt to send armed officers into a tense scene built on lies.
The caller doesn't need to pull a trigger; he only needs to sow enough confusion, fear, and urgency for someone else to do it.
Justice Barrett sits on the highest court in the country. President Donald Trump nominated her in 2020, and she took her seat on Oct. 27, 2020. Her rulings affect constitutional rights, federal power, religious liberty, criminal law, business regulation, and daily American life in ways most people never see until the consequences land at their front door.
People can criticize her opinions, they can legally protest, and they can write, argue, organize, vote, and speak. Free government allows all of that because ordered liberty depends on open disagreement.
Swatting lives in a darker place; it tries to replace argument with panic and persuasion with fear.
The FBI describes swatting as a malicious tactic in which someone makes a hoax report to emergency services, often claiming an immediate threat to life, to draw law enforcement to an unsuspecting target.
Swatting is the malicious tactic of making hoax calls or reports to emergency services, typically feigning an immediate threat to life. Swatting is intended to draw a large response from SWAT teams or other law enforcement resources to an unsuspecting victim’s location, causing chaos and the potential for injury or violence.
Targets of swatting often include high-profile public figures, as well as schools, hospitals, places of worship, and centers of mass transportation, but anyone can be a victim. A swatting incident may be an isolated event targeting one victim or part of a larger coordinated effort to target multiple victims.
Swatting may be conducted to harass, intimidate, or retaliate against intended targets. It is a serious crime that can have deadly consequences due to confusion on the part of victims and responding officials, and that also diverts limited public safety resources from valid emergencies.
Threat actors often compile sensitive information from a wide range of publicly available sources, including online accounts, to develop invasive profiles of their targets. They leverage spoofing technology to anonymize their identities, using phone numbers, email addresses, and social media profiles to make it appear the false report is coming from the victim. Threat actors may also use compromised smart home devices to facilitate swatting attacks.
The FBI also warns that swatting can cause injury or violence, endanger victims and responding officers, and divert public safety resources from real emergencies.
Nobody should prevent the Barrett incident from appearing out of nowhere. In 2022, Nicholas John Roske traveled to Maryland intending to kill Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Roske later pleaded guilty to attempted murder, and then-Attorney General Pam Bondi said the attack targeted the judicial system itself.
The DOJ sought at least 30 years, and Roske received 97 months in prison and lifetime supervised release.
Barrett's own family has faced threats, too. In March 2025, Charleston, S.C., police investigated a bomb threat involving Amanda Coney Williams, Barrett's sister, after an email claimed a pipe bomb had been placed in her mailbox. Police determined the threat was false, but the point of the act was obvious enough: frighten the target and their family. Make public service feel like a sentence.
Law enforcement should treat swatting against judges, elected officials, and public servants as a violent threat, not a nuisance call with better technology. Prosecutors should pursue every caller, helper, and online cheerleader who crossed into criminal conduct. The punishment should fit the created risk, not the luck of a peaceful ending.
America can't keep a constitutional system healthy while judges wonder whether the next false emergency call sends armed officers to their homes. Barrett didn't face a bad joke; she faced a manufactured crisis aimed at her home, her security detail, and the rule of law itself.
A country that allows cowards to outsource violence through a phone call will eventually watch one of those calls end exactly as intended.
Fearless coverage doesn’t happen accidentally, and PJ Media readers know the stakes keep getting higher. Join PJ Media VIP today and use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off. Use the link below to support independent conservative journalism that refuses to look away from threats against the rule of law.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member