A powdery substance was found Friday along with a threatening letter in a mailroom at the offices of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the latest security alert as the prosecutor weighs a potential landmark indictment of former President Donald Trumpauthorities said.
New York police and environmental officials isolated and removed the suspicious letter, and testing “determined there were no hazardous substances,” Bragg’s spokeswoman said. , Danielle Filson. The substance was sent to a city lab for further examination, police said.
“Alvin, I’m going to kill you,” the letter read, according to a person familiar with the matter. The person was not authorized to speak publicly about an ongoing investigation and did so on condition of anonymity.
THE Discoveryin the same building where a grand jury is expected to resume work on Mondaycame amid increasingly hostile rhetoric from Trump, a Republican who is hosting the first rally of his 2024 presidential campaign in Waco, Texas on Saturday.
Hours earlier, Trump had posted on his Truth Social platform that any criminal charges against him could lead to “potential death and destruction.”
Trump also posted a photo of himself holding a baseball bat alongside a photo of Bragg, a Democrat. On Thursday, Trump called Bragg, Manhattan’s first black prosecutor, an “animal.”
The building where the letter was found was not evacuated and business carried on as usual, with prosecutors coming and going and bike delivery people dropping off lunch orders. The building houses various government offices, including the city’s marriage bureau.
Security has been heavy around the court buildings and the district attorney’s office in recent days as the grand jury investigates hidden money paid in Trump’s name during his 2016 campaign.
Extra police are on patrol, metal barricades have been set up along sidewalks and bomb-sniffing dogs regularly sweep buildings, which have also been the subject of unfounded bomb threats in recent days.
A spokesperson for the New York State Court said, “Due to the nature of the heightened interest in proceedings at New York City courthouses, we have increased security, at the both inside and on the perimeter, and officers were reminded to remain vigilant and maintain situational awareness.”
In a memo to staff on Friday, Bragg said the office also received offensive and threatening phone calls and emails. He thanked his staff of nearly 1,600 for their perseverance in the face of “heightened press attention and security around our office” and said their safety remained the top priority.
“We will continue to enforce the law evenly and fairly, which each of you does every day,” Bragg wrote.
Reverend Al Sharpton said he would hold a prayer vigil for Bragg’s safety on Saturday in Harlem. He and other black leaders condemned Trump’s rhetoric about Bragg and billionaire George Soros, who backed a group that backed Bragg’s campaign, as “not a dog whistle but a mouthpiece of incendiary bile and anti-Semite”.
The grand jury, convened by Bragg in January, investigated Trump’s involvement in a $130,000 payment made in 2016 to porn actor Stormy Daniels to stop him from going public with a sexual relationship she said having had with Trump years earlier. Trump denied the claim.
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Associated Press writer Bobby Caina Calvan contributed to this report.