Former Secretary of Transportation and likely 2028 presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg was briefly separated from his children after an anonymous false report alleging he was a danger to his young twins.
Buttigieg detailed the ordeal firsthand in a post on Substack, titled “A Terrible Thing Happened to My Family.”
He said he was “furious” that someone “decided to hurt our family this week.”
A few days ago, he wrote, a police officer and Child Protective Services worker showed up at his door. “They explained that there had been an allegation against me, that it concerned our four-year-old twins.”
Buttigieg said he did his best to remain calm but was of course “bewildered and troubled.” The officials informed him he could not be alone with his children until they underwent a forensic interview, a revelation he said “made my stomach turn.”
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The twins stayed at their grandparents house that night. “The twenty-four hours until they returned are among the darkest hours of my life,” Buttigieg said.
“Many times over the years, I have been denounced, yelled at, protested, threatened, and heckled,” he said. “I’ve been through political attacks in office, death threats in public life, and rocket attacks in war. But this is the ugliest thing that has happened to me since my career in service began.”
The more the officer and CPS worker learned, the clearer it became that the allegations were completely false, he explained. “The officer made clear that he believed this was politically motivated, and said it would not be referred to a prosecutor. Nothing in the forensic interview with the children, which was conducted by trained personnel, had led to concerns.”
In a statement to the Associated Press, the Michigan State Police confirmed they had determined the report was false.
“Chasten and I hugged each other as tightly as we have any time since the day our son was put on life support as a critically ill infant just weeks after the adoption,” Buttigieg wrote.
He went on to decry just how ugly politics has become these days, calling it “more like bloodsport.”
“Even though the accusation was absurdly and obviously false, and was promptly rejected by law enforcement, I still worry about the harm it has done.”
He was devastated that his kids had to endure the experience of being place in a room with two strange adults to answer questions that their dad.
“I cannot describe the mix of rage and sadness that I feel at the idea that someone brought our children into this. 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… For God’s sake, they are just kids.”
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