NEW YORK (AP) — A number of President-elect Donald Trump’s most prominent Cabinet members and nominees have fallen victim to bomb threats and “swatting attacks,” Trump’s transition team said Wednesday. The FBI said it was investigating.
“Last night and this morning, several of President Trump’s Cabinet nominees and administration appointees were victims of violent, un-American threats against their lives and those who live with them,” Trump transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
The attacks ranged from bomb threats to strikes in which attackers initiated an emergency law enforcement response against a targeted victim under false pretenses, she said. The tactic has become popular in recent years.
Leavitt said law enforcement and other agencies acted quickly to ensure the safety of those targeted and that Trump and his transition team were grateful.
Among those targeted were New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, Trump’s pick to be the next ambassador to the United Nations; Matt Gaetz, Trump’s first nominee for attorney general; Oregon Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who Trump picked to lead the Labor Department, and former New York congressman Lee Zeldin, who was picked to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.
Law enforcement officials are also investigating whether Susie Wiles, Trump’s modern chief of staff, and Pam Bondi, the former Florida attorney general whom Trump picked to replace Gaetz, as well as other modern administration officials were also victims — and how they were each targeted. said a police official who remained anonymous during the ongoing investigation.
Wiles and Bondi did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The FBI said in a statement that it was aware of “numerous bomb threats and attacks against new government nominees and appointees” and was investigating with its law enforcement partners.
White House spokesman Saloni Sharma said President Joe Biden has been briefed and the White House is in contact with federal law enforcement and Trump’s transition team.
Biden “continues to closely monitor the situation,” Sharma said, adding that the president and his administration “condemn threats of political violence.”
Stefanik’s office said she, her husband and their 3-year-old son were driving home from Washington for Thanksgiving on Wednesday morning when they were notified of a bomb threat against their residence in Saratoga County.
In response to the bomb threat, police searched Stefanik’s home Wednesday morning but found no explosive devices, New York State Police said.
Zeldin said in a social media post that he and his family had also been threatened.
“A pipe bomb threat against me and my family in our home was sent today with a pro-Palestinian message,” he wrote on X. “My family and I were not home at the time and are safe.”
In Florida, the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office said on Facebook that it received “a notification of a bomb threat involving former Congressman Matt Gaetz’s alleged mailbox at a home in the Niceville area” on Wednesday.
While a family member lives at the address, Gaetz is “NOT a resident,” the office said. No threatening devices were found.
Gaetz was Trump’s first candidate for attorney general, but withdrew from the race after allegations that he paid women for sex and slept with underage women. Gaetz has vehemently denied any wrongdoing and a Justice Department investigation into sex trafficking allegations ended with no charges against him.
The threats follow a political campaign marked by disturbing and unprecedented violence. In July, a gunman opened fire at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, grazing the then-candidate in the ear with a bullet and killing one of his supporters. The Secret Service later foiled another assassination attempt at Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida, when an agent spotted the barrel of a gun sticking through a fence while Trump was golfing.
Trump has also been the subject of an Iranian assassination plot, with one man saying he was tasked with planning the assassination of the Republican president-elect.
Authorities also arrested a man this week who they say posted videos on social media threatening to kill Trump, court documents show. In a video posted Nov. 13, Manuel Tamayo-Torres threatened to shoot the former president while apparently holding an AR-15 rifle, authorities said
Among the other videos he posted, according to court documents, was one from an arena in Glendale, Arizona, on Aug. 23, the same day Trump held a campaign rally there. A lawyer for Tamayo-Torres did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
Public figures across the political spectrum have been victims of false bomb threats and false reports of shootings in their homes in recent years.
About a year ago, the FBI responded to a surge in such incidents at officers’ homes, state capitols and courthouses across the country around the holidays. Many were locked down and evacuated in early January after receiving bomb threats. No explosives were found and no one was injured.
Those targeted last year included Georgia Gov. Burt Jones, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost.
The judges overseeing the civil fraud trial against Trump in New York and the criminal election interference trial against him in Washington both came under fire earlier this year. Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith, who recently dropped the two criminal cases he brought against Trump, was also the subject of a fraudulent 911 call on Christmas Day last year.
Earlier this year, schools, government buildings and the homes of city officials in Springfield, Ohio, received a series of false bomb threats after Trump falsely accused members of Springfield’s Haitian community of kidnapping and eating cats and dogs.
And in 2022, scores of historically black colleges and universities nationwide have been the victims of dozens of bomb threats, with the enormous majority arriving during Black History Month celebrations.
The U.S. Capitol Police said in a statement Wednesday that any time a member of Congress falls victim to a swatting incident, “we work closely with our local and federal law enforcement partners.” Police declined to provide further details, also to “minimize the risk of imitators.”
Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson called the threats “dangerous and baseless.”
“There have been not one, but TWO assassination attempts on President Trump this year,” he wrote on America are.”
___ Richer reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Colleen Long and Eric Tucker in Washington, Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin, and Anthony Izaguirre in Albany, New York, contributed to this report.
