Former Congressman Reveals The Dangerous Incident That Led To Abrupt Resignation

Former Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) is sharing more details about the incident that led to his abrupt departure from the House earlier this year.

When announcing his resignation Gallagher referred to a dangerous swatting incident as the main reason for leaving Congress after eight years, but a piece from The Washington Post foreign affairs columnist David Ignatius sheds new light on the ordeal, which was confirmed by local authorities in Green Bay.

According to the Post, the local sheriff received an anonymous call on Dec. 30, 2023, claiming that Gallagher had been shot and his wife and two young daughters were taken hostage. A SWAT team was sent to the family’s home to find all four safe.

“That was a moment when we felt we needed to make a change and take a step back from politics,” Gallagher told Ignatius.

Wisconsin’s WLUK first reported in April that threats to Gallagher’s family likely played a role in his surprising departure.

“This is more just me wanting to prioritize being with my family,” he told reporters at the time. “I signed up for the death threats and the late-night swatting, but they did not. And for a young family, I would say this job is really hard.”

He said during an interview with Fox News in February that “lifers and careerists” had made Congress dysfunctional. He elaborated on that thought in Ignatius’s piece.

“We’ve turned Congress into a ‘green room’ for Fox News and MSNBC, instead of being the key institution of government,” Gallagher said. “Being a bomb-thrower on TV or crapping on my colleagues has never interested me.”

According to The Hill, Gallagher recently started a job working on defense initiatives for Palantir Technologies, a software company co-founded by billionaires Peter Thiel and Alex Karp.

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