On December 29, 2023, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows's home in Manchester, Maine was targeted by a swatting call. The night before, her home address had been posted online. Bellows had ruled the previous day that Donald Trump was ineligible for the Maine primary ballot. Federal prosecutors later charged two foreign nationals in a conspiracy that included the call.
What happened
On December 28, 2023, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows issued a decision under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment finding Donald Trump ineligible for the state's Republican primary ballot. The next day, December 29, at about 8:15 p.m., a man called Maine State Police claiming he had broken into Bellows's home in Manchester. Officers responded. Neither Bellows nor her husband was at the residence. There was no intruder.
Bellows said publicly that the call was a swatting attempt meant to intimidate her, and that her home address had been posted online in the hours after the ballot decision.
How it started
The address publication came before the swatting call. According to Bellows's public statements and reporting in CNN, NBC News, and WBUR, her home address was posted on social media by a conservative activist after the ballot decision came out. Within roughly 24 hours, a false report sent law enforcement to that address.
The swatting call was investigated as a crime. In August 2024, federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C. charged two foreign nationals, Thomasz Szabo of Romania and Nemanja Radovanovic of Serbia, in a conspiracy that swatted roughly 100 people, including members of Congress, senior federal officials, and state officials. A February 2025 report identified the Bellows call as part of that case. Prosecutors described Szabo as the founder of the group. He was extradited from Romania in November 2024, pleaded guilty in June 2025 to conspiracy and making bomb threats, and was sentenced in April 2026 to four years in prison. Radovanovic was charged as a co-defendant.
Why this case matters
State-level election officials sit outside almost every specific state privacy statute. The federal Lieu Act, formally the Daniel Anderl Judicial Security and Privacy Act, lets federal judges demand that data brokers remove their personal information, but it covers only federal judges and their families. Daniel's Law in New Jersey and similar statutes in a handful of other states cover police, prosecutors, and judges. Secretaries of state, election administrators, and most state civil officials are not on those coverage lists.
That gap matters in practice. Bellows's address was reachable through ordinary public channels. When the political moment came, it was posted within hours, and the swatting call followed soon after. Every step in that sequence used information that was already public.
What this means for you
Any state official whose decisions can draw a national news cycle faces the same shape of risk: election administrators, state judges, attorneys general, prosecutors, and in some districts school-board members. Looking up a home address by name is fast, publishing it is fast, and a swatting call can follow quickly once the address is out.
The legal protections that exist were written for police and judges first. Election officials can, and should, push for state-level coverage. Removing a home address from the data brokers that list it does not erase every trace, but it closes the easiest lookup before a high-profile moment arrives. That is the piece an official can control today.
For more on how swatting works and what to do about it, see our swatting overview.
What reduces this risk
Bellows's case follows a straightforward sequence: a home address becomes public, then someone uses it to send police to that door. Removing the address from data broker listings before a high-profile moment would not stop a determined person from finding it another way, but it raises the effort and closes the easy paths. No Maine statute shields the home addresses of state election officials the way some states shield judges and police. Until that changes, the practical protection available to these officials is ongoing removal of their information from data brokers, checked regularly and refiled when it reappears.
Public sources
- Maine elections official who removed Trump from primary ballot targeted in swatting incident, police say — CNN, 2023-12-30
- Maine secretary of state targeted with 'swatting' call after ruling Trump ineligible for ballot — NBC News, 2023-12-30
- Maine state official who removed Trump from ballot was targeted in swatting call — WBUR, 2024-01-02
- 'Swatting' incident was meant to intimidate, says Maine secretary of state — The Hill, 2024-01-01
- Police investigate swatting call at home of Maine secretary of state — News Center Maine, 2023-12-30
- Secretary of State swatting case solved with federal charges against two foreign nationals — Maine Public, 2025-02-21