Steve Bannon SWATted tonight.

[RandySF]

Heavily armed police on Friday swarmed around the Capitol Hill rowhouse where former Trump White House adviser Stephen K. Bannon lives after receiving a false report that a man with a gun was inside and had shot someone, according to authorities.

Police shut down streets near the Supreme Court and the Capitol for about one hour, prompting fears of an active shooter. About 12:30 p.m., police reopened the streets after determining that there was no shooting, no weapon, no threat and no victim.

Police initially told The Washington Post that they had encountered a person who claimed to be armed and who appeared to be suffering from a mental health crisis, but they found no gun and no one injured. A D.C. police spokeswoman later said someone had called a crisis hotline and reported that a man inside the rowhouse in the 200 block of A Street NE had shot someone and had a firearm.

The spokeswoman said that call appears to have been a “swatting” attempt, a practice in which someone calls in a false report of an emergency or a crisis to draw police to a particular address or person.

Efforts to reach Bannon and his attorneys were not immediately successful Friday afternoon, and police said they did not know if the person who called the hotline knew it was Bannon’s residence. The call did not come from Bannon’s home, though the caller pointed police to Bannon’s address, officials said.



https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/07/08/police-block-streets-capitol/