A caller told Fairfax County police that gunshots rang out at Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s home. It was a lie.
Late on May 27, someone called the department’s non-emergency line posing as a neighbor and reported two or three gunshots and voices arguing at the Justice’s Fairfax County home.
It was a swatting hoax — a fake emergency built to send armed officers crashing into an innocent person’s home. Fairfax County officers coordinated with Barrett’s Supreme Court security detail and determined within minutes that the report was fictitious.
“Officers immediately coordinated with Supreme Court Police personnel assigned to the residence and quickly determined that the report was fictitious. No additional police resources were utilized.”
This is not a prank. Senator Mike Lee said exactly what it is: “Swatting is an attempt to get an innocent person killed — in this case, a sitting Supreme Court Justice.”
Barrett is only the latest. A man tried to assassinate Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2022. Judges have since been hit with bomb threats and pizza-delivery intimidation, and more than 90 federal judges now require enhanced security.
In April, a federal court sentenced a Romanian national to four years for a swatting ring that targeted judges, members of Congress, and federal officials. Capitol Police called swatting “not just a nuisance” but “extremely dangerous.”
Barrett’s family has been targeted before — her sister received an emailed bomb threat in March 2025. The justices have lived under round-the-clock protection since mobs gathered outside their homes after the 2022 Dobbs leak.
None of it has stopped. It has spread — now to a quiet street in Fairfax County.
The targets are not random. The Dobbs-leak mobs outside justices’ homes, the Kavanaugh plot, the threats against Barrett — the intimidation keeps aiming at the same Court and the same conservative justices.
Chief Justice John Roberts said it in March: attacks on the justices are “dangerous … It’s got to stop.”
It happened in their backyard. Fairfax’s three Democrat congressmen — Don Beyer (VA-8), Suhas Subramanyam (VA-10), and James Walkinshaw (VA-11) — represent the county where a Supreme Court Justice was just targeted. None has said a word about it.
A federal judge was swatted blocks from their own constituents, and the three Democrats who answer for those constituents went quiet.
So here is the question they should answer: do they have nothing to say — or do they not mind that the target was a conservative? All three are on the ballot in November 2026.
The hoax failed for one reason: Fairfax County officers checked before they charged in. Swatting works by turning that instinct against the target. One wrong move and a routine call becomes a body.
On the night of May 27, a stranger tried to turn Fairfax County’s own police into a weapon against a Supreme Court Justice who lives here. It didn’t work this time.