Federal judge swatting wave (January 2024): Chutkan, Engoron, and others

What happened

In late December 2023 and through January 2024, a wave of swatting calls hit public officials tied to high-profile legal cases: federal judges, a state judge, a special counsel, prosecutors, and elected officials.

Special Counsel Jack Smith was swatted at his Maryland home on Christmas Day 2023. Judge Tanya Chutkan, who was presiding over the federal election case against former President Trump, was swatted at her Washington DC home on January 7, 2024. New York Justice Arthur Engoron was targeted on January 11, 2024, hours before closing arguments in the New York civil fraud trial against Trump. Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows was swatted on December 29, 2023. Members of Congress and senior federal officials were hit over the same period.

No target was reported physically injured. Each call still sent officers to a private home expecting an armed emergency.

How it started

Each swatting needed two things: the official's home address and a way to place an anonymous call to local 911. Both were easy to get.

The home addresses of judges, prosecutors, and senior officials were reachable through data brokers, public property records, and other public sources. That was true whether or not the official had filed under an existing privacy law.

The federal Daniel Anderl Judicial Security and Privacy Act had been law for a year before the wave. It lets federal judges require data brokers to stop selling their personal information and to remove their home address and other details on request. The law does not pull an address down on its own: a judge has to file, and a listing that comes back has to be refiled.

Prosecutions followed in related cases. In a separate matter that predated the wave, Abigail Shry of Alvin, Texas left a voicemail in August 2023 threatening to kill Judge Chutkan; she pleaded guilty and was sentenced on November 12, 2025 to 27 months in federal prison. Federal prosecutors also charged two foreign nationals in a broader swatting conspiracy that reporting linked to roughly 100 targets, including members of Congress and senior federal and state officials.

What this means for you

The 2024 wave is one documented chapter in an ongoing pattern. For any official whose work makes enemies (judges, prosecutors, federal agents, state attorneys general, election administrators), the step that enables a swatting is the same: looking up a home address that is already for sale.

The formal programs cover specific roles. Federal judges can file through the removal program under the Daniel Anderl Judicial Security and Privacy Act. State judges and covered officers in New Jersey can use Daniel's Law, which lets them require data brokers to stop posting their home address and unpublished phone number and sue if the broker does not comply. Illinois has a similar Judicial Privacy Act for state judges. Most state officials fall outside all of them.

Removing a home address from the brokers that list it does not erase every trace, but it closes the easiest lookup. Frontline Privacy files those removals and keeps checking for listings that come back.

For more on how swatting works and what to do about it, see our swatting overview.