This story originally appeared on The Advocate.
Pete Buttigieg said Friday that an anonymous child protective services allegation brought police and a Child Protective Services worker to his family’s home this week, forced his 4-year-old twins into forensic interviews, and left him briefly separated from them before authorities concluded the report was false.
In a deeply personal Substack post titled “A Terrible Thing Happened to My Family,” the former transportation secretary described the incident as a “cruel, politically motivated hoax” that invaded his home, frightened his family, and pulled his children into the brutal machinery of American politics.
“Someone decided to hurt our family this week,” Buttigieg wrote. “I’m furious, and I want to share what happened.”
In a statement to The Advocate, Michigan State Police said it received an anonymous report this week and referred the matter to Child Protective Services.
“The Michigan State Police and Child Protective Services responded and determined the report was false,” the agency said in a statement provided by Shanon Banner, director of the department’s Communications and Outreach Division. “False reports are dangerous and divert law enforcement officers and Child Protective Services workers from responding to legitimate emergencies and protecting vulnerable children and families.”
Buttigieg, the first out gay Cabinet secretary confirmed by the U.S. Senate, wrote that a police officer and CPS worker came to his home and told him there had been an allegation against him involving his and husband Chasten Buttigieg’s twins. He said he was told a forensic interview had been arranged for the children the next day, that no family member could be present, and that he would not learn the nature of the allegation until after the interviews were completed.
Then, Buttigieg wrote, the CPS worker told him he should not be alone with his children until the interview.
“The twenty-four hours until they returned are among the darkest hours of my life,” he wrote.
The Associated Press reported Friday that Buttigieg was forced to spend a night away from his children and that a Michigan State Police officer and a child protective services worker came to the family’s home after the anonymous report.
The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services forwarded The Advocate’s inquiry to Michigan State Police.
Buttigieg said the anonymous caller claimed to have spoken to a woman who alleged she had met him at a conference years earlier in Alabama, where she said Buttigieg had confessed to “unspeakable violent crimes.” Buttigieg wrote that the officer asked whether he had ever been to the town where the woman claimed she had met him. Buttigieg said he had not.
“The officer made clear that he believed this was politically motivated, and said it would not be referred to a prosecutor,” Buttigieg wrote. He said the CPS worker also indicated that she had found nothing to substantiate the allegation, though the agency's process would take longer to complete formally.
The post describes an escalating threat to public figures and their families. Buttigieg compared it to swatting, in which someone makes a false emergency report intended to send armed police to a target’s home. In this case, he wrote, the child welfare system was used instead.
“Even so, this is different,” he wrote. “My in-laws had to explain to my children, whom we have taught to avoid talking to strangers, that they would need to have a conversation, one at a time and for nearly an hour each, in a place they’d never been, with adults they did not know, who would ask questions we weren’t allowed to know either.”
For years, Buttigieg’s family life has been treated by some Republican politicians and conservative media figures as political material. After Pete and Chasten Buttigieg adopted their twins, Republicans and right-wing commentators repeatedly mocked or criticized Buttigieg for taking parental leave while serving in President Joe Biden’s Cabinet.
Buttigieg and Chasten Buttigieg have long been targets of anti-LGBTQ+ attacks, including attacks on their marriage, parenthood, and visibility as a same-sex family in national politics. Buttigieg wrote that the family is “used to nasty, hateful, and sometimes violent things being said about us and even about our family,” but said this was the first time someone had “managed to invade our lives like this — and drag our children into it.”
Buttigieg emphasized that the officer, CPS worker, and forensic interviewers were professional and “just following procedure,” writing that child welfare workers have difficult jobs protecting children from harm. In this case, he wrote, their time and resources were wasted by an allegation that authorities quickly rejected.
Buttigieg said making a false report is a crime and that he intends to pursue any available legal options.
“I don’t know how much we can do about it, but so help me God, if there is any way to press civil or criminal charges over this, we will,” he wrote. “Not just for our own sakes but to draw a line that I thought everyone already recognized: do not mess with someone’s kids.”
A spokesperson for Pete Buttigieg told The Advocate that Buttigieg’s Substack post is his statement on the incident. The Advocate has reached out to Chasten Buttigieg for additional comment.
