Former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker was swatted on the day he testified in the New York "hush money" trial of former President Donald Trump.
Swatting is the act of calling in a fake police report, usually about a violent crime, to a person's home or business — prompting a heavy police response.
On April 25, a person who said their name was "Jamal" sent an email to a local newspaper claiming he had tied up his wife in the basement and killed her lover. He provided Pecker's address in Greenwich, Connecticut.
"I f-cked up really bad," the swatter wrote, according to a report from Reuters. "Please help me."
Reuters reports, "The incident report by the Greenwich Police Department said when police were alerted to the email they were already aware of Pecker's home address due to his 'being involved in a highly publicized trial.'"
"A check ... revealed no emergency," the police report, obtained by the outlet, detailed. "The email was likely a swatting by proxy attempt."
Trump is accused of falsifying business records during his 2016 presidential race to pay porn star Stormy Daniels to remain silent about an alleged sexual encounter the two had in the past.
The former president and current Republican presidential nominee has been charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to an alleged $130,000 payment to Daniels.
Pecker had testified that he had bought the rights to stories to squash them and protect Trump's campaign.
“I made the decision to purchase the story because of the potential embarrassment it had to the campaign and to Mr. Trump,” Pecker told the court during his testimony.
Trump has maintained that he is innocent and that the trial is a form of election interference on behalf of the Democratic Party.
Swatting has led to at least one death in the last five years.
In 2017, a fake police report was called in to the home of a man named Andrew Finch in Wichita, Kansas. The swatter had claimed that he had shot his father to death and was holding the rest of his family hostage.
Finch was unarmed and on his porch when he was shot by a police officer who believed that he was reaching for a gun.
The false report had been called in by serial swatter Tyler Barriss, who pleaded guilty to 51 charges of swatting in 2019 — including one count of making a false report resulting in a death. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2019 under a plea agreement.
“We hope that this will send a strong message about swatting, which is a juvenile and senseless practice," U.S. Attorney Stephen McAllister said during a news conference following Barriss' sentencing. "We’d like to put an end to it within the gaming community and any other context. Swatting, as I’ve said before, is not a prank."
