You might remember Jess Piper. She is a bit of an insufferable leftist who long ago lost a bid for the Missouri House of Representatives and is a frequent flier on our site because that insufferably is a gold mine of material. Every time she posts something dumb on Twitter/X, we think ka-ching!
The latest is that she claims she was SWATted and it is all the fault of Chaya Raichik, a.k.a. Libs of TikTok, but Raichik presents video evidence calling her claims into question. We report, you decide.
It all started with the assassination attempt on Trump. As you might have seen, there was an ER doctor in the audience, Dr. Jim Sweetland, and he attempted to render aid on site, at a time when he reasonably feared being shot. In other words, he's a hero.
Here he is being interviewed by MSNBC:
So, on the day of, he had a shirt on that said U.S.A., and a red MAGA hat. That so triggered Piper that she posted this on Twitter/X:
I know there are likely hundreds of thousands of doctors who identify as Republican. But to identify with Trump and attend his rally? My God.
— Jess Piper (@piper4missouri) July 15, 2024
An accurate image of that post was placed on the Libs of TikTok account with this commentary:
This whole tweet is massive projection.
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) July 16, 2024
Leftists think your political views, s*xuality, race, etc should determine if you can receive healthcare (among other things). We saw that during covid for example. So they accuse us of also believing that.
They can’t fathom that people… pic.twitter.com/VEeBJ1xdkh
The cut off text reads:
We saw that during covid for example. So they accuse us of also believing that.
They can’t fathom that people would have ethics and morals because they’re completely morally bankrupt.
Indeed, Piper was so angry that an ER doctor was at a Trump rally wearing a MAGA hat that she made a whole video making the same kinds of arguments. In turn, Raichik found her insanity noteworthy enough to put on her Libs of TikTok account:
Jess, who lost her race for a Missouri House seat is “mortified” that a Trump supporter can be a doctor. pic.twitter.com/lGaM9l6qt9
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) July 19, 2024
By the way, this video is all kinds of cray-cray. Did she actually refer to Corey Comperatore, who was murdered when Crooks shot Trump, as ‘unalived?’ The snarky way to refer to someone being killed?
We’re okay with someone using that term in a fictional context, like ‘Kratos has unalived pretty much three quartes of the Greek pantheon’ (referring to the God of War video game series). But to say that in reference to a man who was actually in real life the victim of political violence is vile.
And let’s not lose track of what she is trying to do, here. Dr. Sweetland risked his life to try to render aid to another human being and Piper is doing her best to get him to lose his job because she is triggered by his clothing. Yes, she doesn’t quite say that she wants him to be fired, but she argues essentially that he can’t do his job—which is to render care to everyone regardless of viewpoint, sex, sexuality, and so on. It is incredibly vile.
Then a couple days later, Piper claimed she had been SWATted:
Chaya Raichik is a domestic terrorist.
— Jess Piper (@piper4missouri) July 24, 2024
So, let’s review this. Piper basically tried to get this doctor fired, by writing a post on Twitter/X. She sent it out to the entire world because she wants people to read what she wrote. Likewise, she recorded a TikTok video spewing her hateful nonsense, took time to edit it (you can see several cuts), and then sent it to the world.
And then what was Raichik’s sin? She truthfully and accurately retransmitted her words. The first time she posted an accurate screenshot of her Twitter/X post and the second time, she simply posted her video. Raichik added some substantial commentary when discussing the Twitter/X post, while the video was presented only with a slight summary, with an implicit ‘get a load of this nutter’ tone.
So … what is the logic? Piper can say it, but Raichik can’t say she said it? Or Raichik can’t criticize what she said? And if she does any of those things, she’s somehow a terrorist if a third party SWATs her?
In any case, Piper wrote a whole Substack about it her alleged ordeal:
Swatting and the Libs of Tik Tok https://t.co/jlEX1puBJ2
— A. Hofferkamp (@hffrkmp) July 24, 2024
From the piece:
I was gardening — no surprise — and I heard my dogs start barking. They do this when anyone pulls into the drive. I looked up to see a County Sheriff’s SUV parked down the drive. He didn’t pull up close to the house. My first instinct was panic. We have four adult children and my first thought was that something had happened to one of my kids.
The deputy was apprehensive which made me even more nervous. Then I saw he had a piece of paper in his hand. Whew! I thought maybe he was looking for someone or that I had a summons or something of the sort.
He stood away from me and asked if my name was Jessica. He knew the answer, he lives down the highway, but I affirmed it. He then asked me how many kids I have. Again…panic. I asked him what this was about? He walked up to me and handed over the piece of paper he was holding.
It was a printed email that had been sent to several law enforcement offices and several state offices in Missouri…it had even been mailed to my local water department.
The email claimed to be from a close family relation. The letter stated that the family member had murdered me and my husband the night before. It went on to state that they intended to shoot and kill anyone who came on the property.
Oh my god.
I couldn’t even read the letter. My glasses were in the house and I was so confused by what he was telling me that I couldn’t focus. He asked to make sure those in my house were safe and this confused them too. He then went on to ask why someone would do this to me? Did I have any idea who it could be?
That’s her version, but Raichek reached out to sheriff's office and got their version of events:
Jess Piper Smollet, failed Democrat candidate for Missouri House, claims she was swatted and blamed me.
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) July 24, 2024
But the local sheriff’s office has an entirely different story…
WATCH: pic.twitter.com/b7ZvuuFWtA
So … this doesn’t sound like a real SWATting to us. Mind you, it does sound like there was a form of harassment that the law can punish without violating the First Amendment: False reports to law enforcement is not protected speech. But it doesn’t sound like a SWATting.
Look, let’s talk about the elephant in the room on this: This author has personal experience with SWATting. We have no tolerance of SWATting, regardless of party, ideology or anything like that.
And we don’t think the question of whether a SWATting occurred depends on whether a SWAT team is called out.
It is a new term and a slang term so there is room to debate what counts as SWATting, but we think the essence of SWATting is where you make law enforcement falsely believe there is an emergency situation involving an imminent danger—as in right now. We saw one SWATting incident in the news involving a false report that a family was being held hostage in some celebrity’s mansion. We saw another where actor T.J. Miller made a false report of a bomb on a train, and had the charge dropped because prosecutors believed that brain damage prevented him from having the requisite intent:
Feds Drop Fake Bomb Threat Charge Against ‘Silicon Valley’ Star T.J. Miller https://t.co/6ERVZoRnIC
— Variety (@Variety) July 30, 2021
The point is that we think the SWATter has to believe that he or she is giving law enforcement an immediate sense of danger that drives them to the location, guns out, creating a tense situation where the slightest wrong move might get a person killed. A person might happen to have a cell phone or a toy gun that looks real enough in their hands, and end up getting shot to death by jumpy cops. Bluntly, we think that in a true SWATting, you are attempting to kill someone.
But we don’t think you can do that with an email. You don’t report an imminent criminal situation by email and we don’t think that any person sending such an email can be presumed to think they were creating that kind of ‘cops on edge’ response. It sounds more like everyone in local law enforcement knew it was BS from the start but felt obliged to check it out anyway. It sounds like everything she says about the cop being scared is just B.S.
Indeed, if they had any belief that this could be a real report, they are pretty sure they wouldn’t have sent just one deputy.
And that’s assuming she is telling the truth. Except we know she wasn’t telling the entire truth in her Substack post. Here’s what she wrote about her own post on Twitter/X:
I wrote about a doctor at the fatal Trump rally who gave medical attention to the fireman who later died at the rally. I talked about being so confused to see a doctor, an OBGYN, wearing a MAGA hat and shirt. In the tweet, I spoke about not wanting to think about the treatment an immigrant or a person of color or a woman in need of an abortion would receive from that doctor. I was horrified to know that a practicing physician could support Trump.
There is an important distinction for me: The doctor wasn’t your ordinary, run-of-the-mill, conservative Republican. He attended a rally in which others had signs for mass deportation and concentration camps. That’s not okay.
Well, how many inaccuracies can we count?
First, Dr. Sweetland doesn’t appear to be an OBGYN. For instance, U.S. News and World has profiles of thousands of doctors to allow prospective patients to learn about who might serve them, and their profile makes no mention of him being an OB, a GYN or both. It lists his specialty as ‘Family Medicine.’
Second, he wasn’t ‘wearing a MAGA hat and shirt.’ His shirt said ‘USA.’ To quote Jack Reacher, ‘Details matter.’
Finally, she paints her concern as
I spoke about not wanting to think about the treatment an immigrant or a person of color or a woman in need of an abortion would receive from that doctor.
This simply doesn’t line up with the actual post on Twitter/X, which we can all read and for some reason she didn’t just embed in the Substack piece. But rather than forcing you to scroll back, we will quote what she said (in relevant part):
Would they render care to an undocumented person? A child who’s been raped? A gay person? A trans person?
So, she didn’t even mention specifically ‘people of color,’ or a ‘woman’ who needed an abortion. She mentioned a child who had been raped, but that doesn’t immediately relate to abortion. If she thinks that the only care a child who had been raped might need is an abortion—and an emergency one, no less—she doesn’t know much about the real damage rape can do, especially to a child.
Furthermore, virtually no one on the Republican/Conservative/MAGA side believes that abortions should not be provided in emergencies. So we are talking about an emergency room doctor, so the only time he would be required to carry out an abortion is in an emergency—if it is not an emergency, the patient would presumably schedule an appointment with someone who specializes in it—and his clothing is zero evidence that he wouldn’t perform an emergency abortion if needed.
So, this is deeply dishonest from Piper, and it calls the rest of her story into question. A deputy did come—Raichik confirmed that—but we are not sure we trust anything else she was saying.
Thus, based on what we presented to you, we don’t think this was a real SWATting, but you are free to make up your own mind.
All of which doesn’t mean that whatever this was, was okay or right. As we said, this does sound like harassment that can and should be punished in the criminal law. But we don’t think that is SWATting.
Still, even if the person who wrote the email was definitely angry because he read a post Piper wrote on Twitter/X via a screenshot on the Libs of TikTok account, or because he saw when Libs of TikTok reposted Piper’s video, this is not Raichik’s fault. As we said in a different context:
Of course, we have said over and over again that by this author’s rules, Ms. Raichik is not responsible for someone else getting angry and violent due to her reporting.
But at the same time, by ‘their rules,’ the left’s rules, then Piper herself is engaged in incitement of violence or (sigh) ‘stochastic terrorism.’ She literally called Raichik a terrorist. Thus every death threat or act of violence is, according to Piper’s own rules, Piper’s fault.
Not that we expect Piper to be introspective enough to figure this out, but there you go.
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