Police reportedly responded to a swatting incident at the home of the New York judge who’s overseeing former President Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial this week.
The threat came in early Thursday, just hours before Judge Arthur Engoron was scheduled to hear closing arguments in Trump’s Manhattan Supreme Court trial. Trump is accused of illegally inflating the value of his properties by billions of dollars.
Police “did respond to a Great Neck home at 5:30 a.m. to investigate a swatting incident,” a spokesperson for the Nassau County Police Department in Long Island told HuffPost, while declining to confirm it was Engoron’s home.
“Currently, it’s unfounded,” they said of the threat.
According to CNBC, police were tipped off by a local newspaper, which received an email making a threat to Engoron.
Both the New York Daily News and The New York Times reported that the matter involved reports of a bomb. According to the Daily News, no explosives were found after a bomb squad did a sweep of the home.
The early morning incident did not appear to delay the hearing. Trump entered the courtroom on Thursday complaining about the trial and how it’s an “unconstitutional witch hunt” and “election interference at the highest level.”
A spokesperson for the state Supreme Court did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
Trump had degraded Engoron as “mean & nasty” on his Truth Social platform Wednesday after the judge refused to allow him to make his own closing arguments in his trial unless he stuck to “relevant” matters and didn’t give “a campaign speech.”
Engoron initially said he was open to the idea, so long as Trump abided by the court’s rules. Trump did not agree to this by the Wednesday deadline, however.
The early morning call to police came just four days after another swatting call at the home of U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing Trump’s criminal election interference case in Washington, D.C.
Police there said they responded to a report of an active shooter late Sunday night. The call came not long after Chutkan denied Trump’s request for immunity in the case.