Oct. 25 (UPI) — Authorities retrieved three more suspicious packages Thursday, two addressed to former Vice President Joe Biden in Delaware and one to Oscar-winning actor Robert De Niro in Manhattan, officials said.
Police said the packages appeared to be similar to several others found Wednesday addressed to former President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, former Attorney General Eric Holder, former CIA Director John Brennan and California Rep. Maxine Waters.
Packages to Biden were found at two different post offices, one in New Castle and the other in Wilmington. Both were located early Thursday, the Delaware News Journal reported.
WTXF-TV obtained a photo of one of the packages addressed to Biden, which used his full name and included a return address for Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the former chair of the Democratic National Committee. Other packages sent to prominent Democrats Wednesday also listed a return address for Wasserman Schultz’s South Florida office. The one addressed to Holder ended up at the Sunrise, Fla., office because its address to Holder was incorrect, officials said.
The post office in New Castle was evacuated and its mail trucks moved to other locations, WPVI-TV reported. Local authorities said the FBI has taken over the investigation. The News Journal said that the Wilmington post office remained open Thursday.
Authorities swept Biden’s Greenville, Del., home Wednesday and found nothing suspicious, the Delaware News Journal reported.
De Niro’s package also had similarities to those found Wednesday, New York police said. It was found at a building owned by the actor that housed a restaurant and offices for Tribeca Films.
The package at De Niro’s building on Greenwich Street had the same stamps and return address for Wasserman Schultz in Florida.
New York police retrieved the package and sent it to a secure facility, CNN reported.
CNN’s New York City offices at the Time Warner Center were evacuated Wednesday when a similar device was sent there addressed to NBC News commentator and former CIA director John Brennan. A similar package was found at the home of liberal hedge fund billionaire George Soros on Monday.
“This investigation is of the highest priority for the FBI,” bureau chief Christopher Wray said in a statement. “We have committed the full strength of the FBI’s resources and, together with our partners on our Joint Terrorism Task Forces, we will continue to work to identify and arrest whoever is responsible for sending these packages.
“We ask anyone who may have information to contact the FBI. Do not hesitate to call; no piece of information is too small to help us in this investigation.”
The FBI said the packages were mailed in manila envelopes with bubble wrap interior and were affixed with computer-printed address labels and six USPS “Forever” stamps.
Law enforcement officials told The Washington Post the devices had pipes stuffed with explosive material and were wrapped in electrical wire and tape, but they did not describe how they would have been detonated.
“The FBI will continue to work with our federal law enforcement partners at the United States Secret Service, United States Postal Inspection Service, and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, as well as our state and local law enforcement partners, to identify and arrest the person or people responsible for sending these packages,” the FBI statement said.
Malcolm Brady, a former Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives official and bomb investigator, told the Post that suspects of such crimes are often “loner types” and suggested the wrong address on Holder’s package may have been intentional.
“That looks like an intentional manipulation of the system, to try to get it to go to the congresswoman,” Brady said. “I strongly suspect he wanted that package to go to her. That suggests he’s really focused on her.”
On the campaign stump in Mosinee, Wis., Wednesday night, President Donald Trump appeared to tone down past rhetoric about Democrats and news media, in light of the attacks.
“No nation can succeed that tolerates violence,” Trump told the audience. “The language of moral condemnation and destructive routine, these are arguments and disagreements that have to stop. Those engaged in the political arena must stop treating political opponents as being morally defective.”
Trump, though, appeared to blame news media for some of the political divide.
“The media also has a responsibility to set a civil tone and to stop the endless hostility and constant negative and oftentimes false attacks and stories,” he said. “They’ve got to stop.”
