New York CNN —
Larry Taunton was in bed around 1 a.m. on Sunday in his Alabama home when he noticed his dog, Ranger, getting worked up.
“His ears were up and moving like satellite dishes,” Taunton told CNN in an interview.
He noticed a flicker of light, and then the German Shepherd headed toward the front door. Taunton grabbed his gun and followed, leaving the lights off. When he got to the kitchen, all he could see in the darkness was a figure in body armor holding a semi-automatic rifle trying to open his door.
“I’m thinking, if that man comes through my door, I’m going to light him up,” Taunton said. “Because you’re just thinking, ‘Somebody’s here to murder me and my wife.’”
It turned out to be three officers, guns drawn. Police told Taunton that they received a call saying three men in hoodies were “moving throughout the house, executing everybody.”
He had been swatted.
Taunton, who has more than 177,000 followers on X and more than 140,000 YouTube subscribers, is one of at least a dozen influencers who have been “swatted” in the last two weeks. Swatting is a crime that involves making a bogus emergency call claiming a horrific emergency is taking place – often a shooting – to draw police and first responders to a person’s home.
Almost all the influencers who have publicized their recent swattings are conservative supporters of President Donald Trump. Many have also interacted with top Trump adviser and donor Elon Musk on X over the years, with Musk either replying to them or reposting their X posts. The swattings are happening as Tesla owners and dealerships are experiencing a wave of vandalism in backlash against the company’s billionaire CEO, and his Department of Government Efficiency.
The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security say they’re investigating this latest rash of swattings, which these influencers say could easily turn deadly.
“Under President Trump’s leadership, we will not sit idly by as conservative new media and their families are being targeted by false swatting,” Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem wrote on X on Wednesday. “@DHSgov has the ability to trace phone numbers and track location information. We will use it to hunt these cowards down. This is an attack on our law enforcement and innocent families and we will prosecute it as such.”
FBI Director Kash Patel wrote on X last week that the FBI is “already taking action to investigate and hold those responsible accountable.”
“This isn’t about politics—weaponizing law enforcement against ANY American is not only morally reprehensible but also endangers lives, including those of our officers,” he wrote. “That will not be tolerated.”
‘I just fell to the ground’
Erin Derham lives in Western North Carolina with her husband, Mat Van Swol, and three children. Like Taunton, she was in bed early Sunday when she heard loud banging on her door at 1:30 a.m.
Derham had an idea what might be happening. She and Van Swol had seen reports of other influencers getting swatted and warned their local police department that they might be a target. Van Swol, who says he’s a former liberal, has become known alongside his wife as an activist calling for more aid to North Carolina after Hurricane Helene. Van Swol, who has more than 198,000 followers on X, has often interacted with Musk on the social media platform.
But Derham was not prepared to see someone holding a gun, banging at her door.
“I could hear loud sirens blaring down the street,” she said to CNN. “We found out later four police officers and cars came to our house, but also there was a fire truck, two ambulances and all the county on-duty police officers flying towards my house.”
Derham chose to answer the door instead of sending her husband, believing she would look less threatening “in my little polka dot pajamas.”
“(The police) came in and I yelled, ‘Matt, we’re being swatted!’” she said. “… and I kept yelling, ‘We have three kids upstairs, we have three kids upstairs, do not (do anything), nobody is here.”
Someone had called the police pretending to be her husband, Derham learned. During the call, the person claimed to be Van Swol and said Derham had been killed and he had been shot twice in the stomach.
She was also told the caller sounded like an older man and responses were slightly delayed, leading her to believe computer-generated manipulation may have been involved.
“I felt like I was going to pass out most of the time that they were in the house,” Derham said. “I held it together until they shut the door, and then I fell, like I literally just fell to the ground.”
‘A cheap form of terrorism’
Swatting is a form of harassment that’s considered a crime at the federal and state levels.
And it can be deadly. In 2017, police killed Andrew Finch after a group of online gamers — who were later imprisoned — called 911 to report that a man had shot his father in the head and was holding his mother and brother at gunpoint, while threatening to set their home on fire.
Finch was shot by police when he dropped his hands as officers told him to raise his arms when he came out of the house, according to the US attorney.
A 60-year-old Tennessee man reportedly died of a heart attack after police, responding to a swatting call, told him to come out of the house with his hands up during an incident in 2020.
And swatting, which has been on the FBI’s radar for decades, can be a tough crime to prosecute. Online methods make it easy to spoof a phone number and a voice.
Many of the conservative influencers targeted in recent days are gun owners. Taunton said it was good sense from police, as well as “good trigger discipline on both parts,” that kept his situation from turning into a tragedy.
The responding officers have in some cases been impacted, too. Derham said she and her husband have been in touch with the first officer who responded to the swatting call targeting their home. He has been “very affected,” by the incident she said, considering he could have unintentionally harmed her, or her children, had the night gone differently.
