Report: 70 House Members to Call on DOJ to Investigate SWATting of Conservative Bloggers

by Liberty Chick / Breitbart News

 

Earlier today, Breitbart News reported that the recent SWATting attacks on several political writers and commentators have been gaining traction in the mainstream media:

Today, CNN featured a story centering around CNN contributor and RedState managing editor Erick Erickson, the latest victim in a series of incidents in which an imposter mimics the phone number of a target, then calls the police and confesses to a violent crime. Such confessions often result in law enforcement personnel, many times special weapons and tactics teams (SWAT teams), responding to calls with full force, risking the life and health of the target. This tactic has been called SWATting by the FBI. 

Later, on his own radio show, Erickson played a recording of the 911 call that triggered the visit from law enforcement to his home.  He went on to describe the series of events that occurred on the evening of May 27^th.  As he discussed the recent letters sent by Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss and Texas Congressman Kenny Marchant calling on the Department of Justice to investigate the SWATting incidents, Erickson announced a breaking development regarding Congressional actions:

I have been told that Monday, the House of Representatives will engage on this and seventy or more members will formally be sending a letter to Eric Holder, asking him on behalf of these members of the house to also get the FBI involved.

During the latter half of Erickson’s program, Breitbart News contributor Lee Stranahan phoned in as a guest.  In the early morning hours of May 28^th, only hours after Erickson’s SWATting incident, Stranahan hosted a live online podcast to discuss the SWATtings.  As Breitbart News reported earlier:

On the heels of Erickson’s SWATting on May 27^th, 2012, Breitbart contributor Lee Stranahan decided to conduct a podcast late that same evening to discuss the incident; the podcast extended into the very early morning hours of May 28, 2012.  Stranahan had invited guest Patrick Frey, a deputy district attorney at Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office who also blogs under the pseudonym Patterico, to offer insight into his own experience as a victim of SWATting.  Frey was the target of a similar incident in June 2011, an account that Frey has detailed extensively at his own blog in recent weeks, in connection with the story of a much broader, prolonged campaign of alleged lawfare and harassment against a group of political writers.  

What followed on the May 28^th podcast was not only unexpected, but shocking.

Partway into the program, at about 49:28, a caller with an unidentified phone number greeted the two, and then claimed to be the swatter from Frey’s June 2011 incident.

As the two discussed the call that was made on May 28^th into Stranahan’s podcast, Erickson stated that Stranahan’s caller sounded like it is the same voice that can be heard on the 911 recording of his own May 27^th SWATting incident.