Amy Coney Barrett has been targeted in a chilling swatting scare, with police rushing to her home over reports of gunfire.
Police Response to the Incident
Police approached the Supreme Court justice's heavily secured Virginia home on Wednesday night with the understanding that the report could be a false alarm, according to independent DC journalist Andrew Leyden.
'Units responding to suspicious noise,' a dispatcher was heard telling officers over the radio. 'Be advised, we have not been able to get an answer on callback to the complainant's phone number. Unknown if it it's going to be a swatting situation.'
A swatting call is a hoax meant to induce an aggressive police response at a particular location. A male voice was heard saying: 'Just made contact with security that's on the scene. They should be outside in an [Ford] Explorer. He said he hasn't heard anything. We're just going to meet up with him first, just to go over anything.'
The suspicion of swatting was confirmed after police talked to Barrett's security team, and the mother of seven was spared from having her home invaded by armed officers.
Political Condemnation
Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah denounced the incident on X on Thursday.
'Swatting is an attempt to get an innocent person killed,' he said. 'The proper response will be putting the offender in prison for many, many years.'
Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville agreed, writing on X: 'I am glad Justice Barrett is okay. Swatting is a serious problem that MUST be addressed. These hoax calls waste valuable time, resources, and put our officers - and swatting victims - in danger. ANYONE who places these hoax swatting calls should be LOCKED UP for a long time.'
Previous Threats and Broader Context
The conservative justice's family has previously been threatened, with her sister Amanda Coney Williams receiving a bomb threat in Charleston, South Carolina, in March 2025.
Barrett's fellow justice Brett Kavanaugh had a terrifying experience of his own in 2022 when California man Nicholas Roske plotted his murder. Roske pled guilty to attempted murder in April 2025 and was later sentenced to 97 months in prison with lifetime supervised release.
Barrett recently warned that America was becoming increasingly divided along political lines. 'We're living in a very politically divided time. It's harder for people to come together,' she told the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas earlier this month.
Her colleague Neil Gorsuch told Fox News that same week, 'violence is never the answer,' as he was asked about recent threats against justices. 'We can debate, we can disagree,' he said. 'But we have to be able to do it in a way that respects one another.'
Chief Justice John Roberts warned last year that heated political rhetoric directed at judges across the nation was fueling violence. 'If you have somebody who's expressing a high degree of hostility to the court, on whatever basis … the danger, of course, is somebody might pick up on that. And we have had, of course, serious threats of violence and murder of judges just simply for doing their work,' Roberts told a judicial conference in June 2025.
The Supreme Court did not immediately return a request for comment on the incident. Metropolitan Police Department, the DC police force, said that the incident took place outside of the District. The local police force in Virginia declined to comment.
