Former White House adviser Steve Bannon has accused President Joe Biden of stoking hatred after police descended on Bannon’s Washington home over a fake report of a gunman on the loose. The incident occurred shortly before Biden’s Thursday speech attacking MAGA Republicans.
Firefighters and police officers were sent to Bannon’s home on Sept. 1 evening, where he broadcasts his “War Room” radio program, DC’s Metropolitan Police Department told The Epoch Times. They left after finding no shots fired and no one hurt.
It was the second time Bannon has been a victim of swatting, a harassment tactic of calling the emergency police line with a false claim of criminal activity so as to dispatch a law enforcement team to a particular address. Such practices can be traumatizing for the targeted person and have turned fatal in the past.
“These are attempts to have the police kill me,” the 68-year-old, who was not home at the time, told The Epoch Times on Sept. 2. The previous hoax call in July prompted some 80 officers to swarm Bannon’s home, he said.
With one wrong assessment from the police or an inadvertent move from the other party, Bannon added, things could have turned ugly.
“It’s very dangerous, they are trying to assassinate,” he said. “They’re trying to weaponize the police to get into a situation where they inadvertently kill the political opponents of the Biden regime.”
Bannon was not the only conservative targeted in recent months. In late August, police showed up at Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) door in the early morning hours, two days in a row, in response to fake reports of a shooting at the residence. Following the first police response, the caller called back using a computer-generated voice, saying that they were upset over Greene’s “stance on ‘trans-gender youth’s rights.’”
A jury in Washington convicted Bannon, who worked in the Trump administration, of being guilty of contempt of Congress in July over his refusal to comply with a subpoena issued by the House Jan. 6 select committee.
Bannon on Friday blamed Biden for escalating hostility against Trump supporters. He noted the prank call had occurred less than an hour before Biden used his primetime speech to attack “MAGA Republicans” who embrace Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.
In Biden’s words, these individuals, together with Trump, “represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”
Bannon described the caller, who like in Greene’s case had used a machine-generated voice, as “very sophisticated.”
“This directly comes from the White House. They’ve stirred up the most dangerous and deranged members of their party,” he said.
By Eva Fu
