The Washington D.C. home and podcast studio of right-wing ideologue and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon was raided by police on Thursday after they received calls about a shooting at the location, Insider reported.
The audience for Bannon’s War Room podcast heard a commotion in the background before he cut to a break. Later in the braodcast, Bannon explained that he got “swatted” in the middle of the show. “I tell my team, ‘Hey, can you knock it off? I got to concentrate here.’ We’re actually getting ‘swatted,'” Bannon said.
Swatting, which is a federal crime punishable by up to life in prison, is the act of using a false report to send police to an unsuspecting person’s home.
“At approximately 10:32 a.m., MPD responded to the 200 block of A Street, NE, for the report of a shooting. Preliminarily, this appears to be a false call. MPD searched the area, and nothing was found,” a spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police Department told Insider.
As Insider points out, streamers like Bannon have been targeted by swatters numerous times. Swatters like to plan their attacks so people get to watch their targets get raided live.
Bannon told his audience that he’s been targeted by swatters before. “The criminals, and it is criminals, that continue to ‘SWAT’ us have to understand that the police are savvy to you and investigating it,” he said.
