By Staff Reporter
WASHINGTON — Federal investigators are chasing a wave of powder-laced letters sent to congressional offices and state election officials across the country, and New York’s delegation has been near the center of it.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer’s office was targeted, CBS News reported. A letter meant for Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand was found at her New York City office, where postal inspectors went to investigate, an aide told the network. In the Bronx, six staff members in Rep. Ritchie Torres’ office were exposed to white powder on Friday. On Long Island, Rep. Laura Gillen said her office got a suspicious envelope the same day.
No letter tested so far has held anything dangerous. But officials expect more, and the timing is hard to ignore: early voting in New York opens Saturday, Oct. 24, and runs through Nov. 1, according to the Erie County Board of Elections.
How wide it has spread
At least three dozen House and Senate offices reported receiving the letters last week, in Washington and back home, the Deseret News reported Monday. Both parties were hit. Democratic senators Chris Murphy, Alex Padilla, Lisa Blunt Rochester, Chris Coons and Amy Klobuchar reported letters, as did Republicans Ted Cruz, Susan Collins, Pete Ricketts, Mike Rounds and Ron Johnson.
Election officials in at least 15 states have also reported suspicious mail, the Deseret News said, though it is not clear the two waves are connected. CBS listed election offices in Delaware, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Wisconsin among those that got letters, and said the deliveries to secretaries of state in Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Hampshire, Ohio and Mississippi were intercepted before they arrived. Law enforcement officials have warned that more than 100 such letters could be in circulation, according to ABC News, as cited by the Deseret News.
The FBI and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service are leading the investigation.
“We are committed to protecting our nation’s election officials from threatening and dangerous mail. Any threat or attack on an election official is unacceptable,” Brendan Donahue, deputy chief inspector at the Postal Inspection Service, told reporters, according to CBS. “Our partners, including the FBI and we at the Postal Inspection Service, will bring all of our resources to bear on these investigations.”
Mr. Donahue declined to say how many incidents there have been or whether they are linked, citing the open investigation.
‘The new normal’
Mr. Torres said the envelope opened in his Fordham Road office bore an address indicating it came from San Antonio, Texas, and that it had been turned over to the FBI, CBS New York reported. The substance was not hazardous and no one reported symptoms.
“It was an unnerving experience for everyone on my team,” Mr. Torres said. “To me, it was a grim reminder that, you know, violence and the threat of violence against elected officials is the new normal in our politics.”
Ms. Gillen said her staff was safe and that law enforcement intervened right away. “There is no excuse for acts of violence or intimidation against elected officials in our country,” she said in a statement. “We have to lower the temperature and rise above the hatred, vitriol and extremism that is seeping into our politics.”
A spokesman for Mr. Murphy, Josh Sorbe, said the Connecticut senator’s office was “sent a letter with a suspicious substance” and was alerted by the FBI, the Senate sergeant at arms and Capitol Police. “Due to those efforts and various safety protocols, the Senator and staff were not in immediate danger,” he said.
The weak point is the district office
Mail addressed to the Capitol already goes through an extensive screening process. Mail sent to lawmakers’ home-district offices may not, which is why the House sergeant at arms sent a new notice to members Monday, the Deseret News reported.
“We anticipate additional offices will receive these letters in the coming days,” the notice said. “Please continue to follow safe mail handling procedures and treat all suspicious letters and packages as a threat until deemed safe by first responders.”
The office suggested that district offices have their mail forwarded to Washington to be screened “in accordance with established Capitol complex mail screening procedures,” according to the Deseret News.
That advice reaches Western New York, where members of Congress and both senators keep district offices that handle constituent mail every day. The same vulnerability applies to county boards of elections, which open and process thousands of envelopes at this point in the calendar, from absentee and early mail ballot applications to returned ballots.
Upstate New York has seen this before. In August, the Oswego County Board of Elections was evacuated after staff found an unknown substance on a piece of mail, Newport Dispatch reported. Three employees were evaluated by EMS and one was taken to the hospital as a precaution. The substance was not hazardous, and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service assisted the sheriff’s office.
What to watch
The FBI said in a statement that it and postal inspectors were working “to identify the individual or individuals responsible for the letters.” Federal investigators also probed a series of suspicious letters before the 2024 elections, CBS noted.
Questions that remain open: whether any Western New York congressional or election office has received one of the letters, whether the Erie and Niagara county boards of elections have changed their mail-handling procedures before early voting, and whether federal authorities have identified a common sender. The Buffalo Chronicle has asked the Erie County Board of Elections and the offices of Western New York’s House members and senators, and will update this story with their responses.
Featured photo: The U.S. Capitol at night. Martin Kraft / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
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