nobody will be charged for the lie that took pete buttigieg's kids away for a night

via Washington Blade, The Advocate and WVPE.

The part to hold onto is not the woman. It is the night.

what happened that night

In June, a 50-year-old woman from Alabama, named in the prosecutor's letter only as TJ, was staying with relatives in Marshall County, Indiana. She called in a child welfare complaint about Pete Buttigieg. Michigan State Police, working with Indiana State Police, took it seriously enough to send officers and a child protective services worker to the family's home in Traverse City.

Buttigieg was told he could not be alone with his four-year-old twins until they had been interviewed separately. The children spent that night at Chasten's parents' house.

Nobody found anything, because there was nothing to find.

why nobody will be charged

On July 29, Marshall County Prosecuting Attorney E. Nelson Chipman Jr. emailed his decision, which became public this week. No charges. His reasoning is not that she did not do it. It is this:

"In light of the totality of circumstances, I am unable to conclude that TJ is capable of forming the requisite intent to support a criminal conviction for this offense."

His letter lays out why. Documented alcoholism. Serious mental illness, including hallucinations and delusional thinking. Three police contacts during her stay in the county, one of them a domestic battery arrest with a recorded blood alcohol level of 0.32. She has told people she is God, and that she has had dinner with Barack and Michelle Obama. She is back in Alabama now, living in a halfway house.

So here is the shape of it. Buttigieg called what happened to him a "cruel, politically motivated hoax" and said the separation from his children was "among the darkest hours of my life." Both of those things are true about how it felt. The prosecutor's file suggests the caller was not running a political operation. She was extremely unwell and she reached for the story that was lying around.

the lie she reached for

That is the bit worth sitting with, because it is the bit that scales. The lie she reached for was not random. Gay man, small children, something wrong in that house. She did not have to invent that. It has been on television for three years. It is in the fundraising emails and the state legislature bills and the phrase everybody now recognises without having to be told what it means. A sick woman in Indiana absorbed the ambient accusation and dialled it in, and the machinery on the other end moved at full speed on an uncorroborated call from a stranger who had never met him.

Two people met the same night from opposite ends: a woman nobody protected and a father nobody believed for a few hours. Neither of them wrote the script.

what happens next

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel opened her own investigation in July, into both the complaint and how police handled it, and her office confirms it is still open. That is the one that matters now. Charging TJ was never going to answer the actual question, which is why the call went straight to a squad car and a caseworker instead of to a supervisor and ten minutes of checking.

Buttigieg is a former cabinet secretary with a spokesperson and a lawyer and a functioning relationship with the press. His family says it is "seeking answers and accountability." Most gay parents on the receiving end of the same phone call get none of that. They get the doorbell, and the interview room, and a file that stays open.

The twins came home the next day. Keep asking why they had to leave.