Pete Buttigieg speaks out after 'awful' child services swatting incident: 'We can't go on like this'

WASHINGTON, DC: Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg gave his first interview Wednesday, July 1, following a child services swatting call that led to him being temporarily separated from his two four-year-old children, calling it "one of the most awful moments of my life" and urging the country to agree that families must be kept out of politics.

"As a family, we're just trying to put this behind us," Buttigieg told ABC News ‘Good Morning America’ co-anchor George Stephanopoulos in an exclusive interview.

Pete Buttigieg says allegation was traced to Alabama

Buttigieg, who lives with his husband Chasten and their twins in Traverse City, Michigan, said a police officer and Children's Protective Services worker showed up at his home after an anonymous caller made an allegation against him.

"I don't know how much of this they're going to remember," he said of his 4-year-old twins with his husband, Chasten. "I know I will. It's one of the most awful moments of my life, and something I wouldn't wish on anybody."

"To me, the most important thing going forward is we just cannot allow our politics to keep moving in this direction," he said. "This can't be treated as something that it's just something you accept, something you take on when you choose to go into public service."

He said officials would not initially tell him what the allegation was, but informed him he could not be alone with his children while they conducted their investigation.

"We just can't go on like this," he added. 

"The next day, about 24 hours later, that's when they asked me if I had ever been to a location in Alabama, which I've never been to, where an anonymous caller had told CPS that somebody had told him that I had told her that I had committed unspeakable crimes," he said. "And only then did we know that the police agreed that this was not an allegation that was credible, and that we could start going back to normal as a family."

Pete Buttigieg calls for prosecution, says swatting 'can't be treated as something you accept'

Buttigieg said he hopes whoever made the call "is found and is prosecuted," and that the incident should not be viewed as an acceptable consequence of entering public life.

"This can't be treated as something that it's just something you accept, something you take on when you choose to go into public service," he said. "We just can't go on like this."

Buttigieg said his children were each interviewed alone and that he did not know the circumstances of the allegation until after those interviews were complete.

Michigan State Police confirmed in a statement last week that the anonymous report from the person was false.

"False reports are dangerous and divert law enforcement officers and Child Protective Services workers from responding to legitimate emergencies and protecting vulnerable children and families," Michigan State Police said in a statement.

Buttigieg told Stephanopoulos he plans to continue his public service work in the wake of the incident, saying, "I'm going to keep working on causes that I believe in."

Buttigieg said the bipartisan response to his decision to speak out publicly, including outreach from people he has campaigned against, gave him hope.

"We have got to be able to agree as a country on at least this fundamental principle that you do not go after people's families, that whatever you think of somebody's politics, however you want to argue or fight about political issues, you leave somebody's children alone," he said. "This is so far beyond Democrat and Republican stuff."

Buttigieg added that he hopes that moving forward, the country is able to agree on "fairness" and "integrity" in public life.