Two days after a man made a fake 911 call at Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley’s South Carolina home, she became the target of a “swatting” attempt a second time, this time by someone who claimed Haley killed her daughter.
A Charleston County Sheriff’s Office deputy responded to Haley’s home in the town of Kiawah Island on Jan. 1 after someone called 911 claiming to be on the phone with Haley, according to a Sheriff’s Office report.
The caller said Haley shot her daughter, who was lying in a pool of blood, and threatened to shoot herself, the report said.
The deputy spoke to an unidentified woman at the front door who matched Haley’s description and quickly concluded the call was a hoax, according to the report obtained by Reuters in response to a records request Received raid attempts at Haley’s house. The attack on January 1st has not yet been reported.
Haley’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Haley said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that she had been the victim of lashings twice, but did not give a date for the second incident or details of what happened. “It wasn’t the first time,” she said of the Dec. 30 incident. “I think it’s happened twice already.”
Swatting is the act of submitting false reports to the police in order to trigger a potentially dangerous response from officers. Law enforcement experts see it as a form of intimidation or harassment that is increasingly being used against prominent figures, including officials involved in the civil and criminal cases against Donald Trump. Haley is Trump’s challenger for the Republican presidential nomination in November’s election.
Reuters reported Saturday that Haley’s home was searched on Dec. 30 when a man called 911 claiming he had shot a woman and threatened to harm himself in her home. Haley’s parents, ages 87 and 90, and her caretaker were home at the time, police said.
The swatting incidents are part of a wave of violent threats, bomb threats and other intimidation attempts against government officials, members of the judiciary and election workers since the 2020 election that have alarmed law enforcement ahead of this year’s U.S. presidential election.
The number of attacks has increased sharply in the last two months. They are aimed at both allies and rivals of Trump, who is fighting for his return to the White House.
Targets include figures who have publicly opposed Trump, such as Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat who excluded him from her state’s primary. Judges and at least one prosecutor handling cases against Trump have also been targeted. But Trump supporters like US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene were also the target of attacks.
The attacks on Haley, who is challenging front-runner Trump in the Republican presidential election, occurred in Kiawah Island, a wealthy South Carolina community of about 2,000 residents.