This is a developing story. ABC4 will update this post as new information becomes available.
SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — According to the FBI, on Friday morning, a white substance was found in the mail addressed to Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson.
“The envelope, containing white powder and signed by the so-called ‘United States Traitor Elimination Army,’ was intercepted in Reno, Nevada. Law enforcement officials are currently investigating the threat and testing the substance,” a press release from the Lt. Governor’s Office said.
“We will not be intimidated,” Lt. Governor Deidre Henderson said on X, formerly known as Twitter, this afternoon.
The release also states that Utah is one of at least 20 states targeted in the past week.
According to ABC News, as of September 17, Election offices in New York, Tennessee, Wyoming, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas, Indiana, Massachusetts, and Colorado received the suspicious packages.
Similar suspicious mail was addressed to offices in additional states – Arizona, Georgia, Connecticut, and Maryland among them – but investigators intercepted them before they reached their destination. CNN and the Associated Press report that Alaska, California, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Virginia have also been targeted this week.
“This incident is the latest tactic in a nationwide trend of threats and intimidation toward election officials,” Lt. Gov. Henderson said in the release.
Nationwide, offices that handle elections have been stepping up with extra precautions. Locally, Weber County’s Auditor stepped up their precautions going into this election season.
“You have the risk of one or two lone actors or a small group, that, really their goal is to disrupt and we have to plan for that because people’s lives could be at stake,” Weber County Auditor Ricky Hatch told ABC4 earlier this week.
According to the Lt. Governor’s Office, Henderson and state law enforcement officers will continue to monitor the situation and take the precautions necessary to ensure election workers’ safety and maintain an orderly election.
“I am grateful for the swift action of postal workers and law enforcement and the perseverance of election workers who show up and do their jobs every day despite all the rhetoric and risk. We love them. We owe them. They are heroes,” Henderson said in the release.
CNN, ABC News, the Associated Press, Kade Garner, and Matthew Drachman contributed to reporting.
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Publish date : 2024-09-20 09:49:00
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