Woke up in the middle of the night by police officers armed to the teeth: this is the mishap that happened to Rick Wilson, a political consultant who was the victim of a bad hoax with overtones of intimidation, in this tense election year in the United States. United.
In recent months, judges, election officials and political officials on both sides of the American political spectrum have been victims of “swatting,” where individuals call law enforcement to report a false violent crime, The objective being to provoke a forceful intervention by the police at the home of the targeted person.
“It’s hard to have dozens of police officers around the house with AR-15s (semi-automatic rifles, editor’s note) who come knocking on the door at three in the morning,” Rick Wilson told AFP. former Republican Party strategist and co-founder of the Lincoln Project, a coalition of Republicans opposed to Donald Trump.
Already the target of such a bad joke before, the man left his Florida home with his hands in the air. “I’m the victim of a hoax!” he told the police.
The consultant offered a reward of $25,000 for any information leading to the identification of the caller(s), having no idea who could have orchestrated such an operation. But the objective of these individuals is clear, he asserts: “to get people killed.”
As the November presidential election approaches, which will see Joe Biden and Donald Trump face off once again, these bad hoaxes have revived concerns about the holding of the vote in a highly polarized political context, under threat foreign interference as well as disinformation campaigns.
Same modus operandi
Especially since a modus operandi seems to be emerging and raises fears of a coordinated operation against political leaders. An individual calls emergency services to “confess” to the murder of his partner and announce his intention to commit suicide. Which is enough to trigger the dispatch of heavily armed intervention units.
The federal police, the FBI, said they had recorded 600 incidents of this type across the country in 2023. The phenomenon, which now appears to be “on the rise”, appeared in the 2000s and was initially used to harass celebrities or even employed by rival online players.
Among those targeted in recent months are Tanya Chutkan, the judge who will preside over the hearings at Donald Trump’s federal trial for allegedly unlawful attempts to overturn the result of the 2020 election. But also prosecutor Jack Smith, who is overseeing the prosecutions brought against the former president in two cases, the elected Trumpist Marjorie Taylor Greene or Gabriel Sterling, responsible for holding the elections in the key state of Georgia.
Georgia is also one of the American states which is seeking to toughen the penalties incurred by the perpetrators of these offenses. Florida parliamentarians presented a bill in January providing for up to 20 years in prison in the event that a victim is seriously injured during police intervention.
An initiative launched after Florida Republican Senator Rick Scott himself was the victim of such a hoax.
In reality, however, those responsible are very rarely identified and arrested. According to experts, they use artificial intelligence tools to imitate other voices, or encrypted technologies to cover their tracks.
“Tracking these individuals is extremely difficult,” Justin Smith, a member of the Committee for Safe and Secure Elections, an organization designed to protect voters and electoral agents from threats and pressure, told AFP.
This retired police officer therefore encourages electoral officials to inform law enforcement of their place of residence in order to reduce the risks of such hoaxes.
