Fanone says mother was swatted after Jan. 6 officer called Trump ‘authoritarian’

Michael Fanone, a former Washington, D.C., police officer who was attacked during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, said his mother’s home was swatted hours after he called former President Trump an “authoritarian.”

Fanone made the remark while speaking to the media Tuesday outside the courthouse where closing arguments were being conducted in Trump’s criminal hush money trial. In his statements, he called the former president an “authoritarian” with a fetish for violence.

Also on Tuesday, a fake “manifesto” attributed to Fanone was sent to a number of email addresses, including some associated with his former high school. It claimed that he had killed his mother and planned to go to the recipients’ school on Wednesday and shoot more people. It provided his mother’s home address in Virginia, NBC News reported after viewing the manifesto.

Fanone told the outlet that his mother was “mortified” to find SWAT team officers at her home that night when she opened the door in her nightgown.

“How dangerous is it to send law enforcement in which you essentially are describing an active shooter, in which the only person present is a 78-year-old f‑‑‑ing woman,” Fanone told NBC News. “This is the reality of going against or challenging Donald Trump.”

“These swatting calls are incredibly f‑‑‑ing dangerous, especially when the target is somebody like my mom,” he said.

Fanone said he understood that police received more than two dozen calls connected to the incident.

His father was also targeted at his separate home address, Fanone said, but he was out of the country.

“All I do is go out there and talk about what happened to me and so many other police officers, like I always have, and this is the recourse,” he said. “This is the direct result of that.”

Fanone has been an outspoken critic of Trump and those who participated in the Jan. 6 riot. On that day, he was beaten by people attacking the Capitol and suffered a heart attack and a traumatic brain injury after being struck by a taser. He was among several members of law enforcement who testified before the House select committee investigating the attack.