A powdered substance was found Friday with a threatening letter in the mailroom of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, the latest security scare as prosecutors weigh a possible historic indictment of former President Donald Trump, authorities said.
New York City police and environmental protection officials isolated and removed the suspicious mail, and tests “found no hazardous substances,” Bragg spokeswoman Danielle Filson said. The substance was sent to a city laboratory for further examination, police said.
“Alvin, I’m going to kill you,” the letter said, according to people familiar with the matter. The person was not authorized to speak about the ongoing investigation and did so on condition of anonymity.
The finding, in the same building where the grand jury will resume work Monday, comes amid increasingly hostile rhetoric from Trump, a Republican who is holding the first rally of his 2024 presidential campaign in Waco, Texas.
Hours earlier, Trump posted on the Truth Social platform that the criminal charges against him could lead to “potential death and destruction.”
Trump also posted a photo of himself holding a baseball bat next to a picture of Bragg, a Democrat. On Thursday, Trump called Bragg, Manhattan’s first Black district attorney, an “animal.”
The building where the letter was found had not been evacuated and business was operating as usual, prosecutors coming and going and bicycle delivery workers dropping off lunch orders. The building houses various government offices, including the city’s marriage bureau.
Security has been tight at courthouses and the district attorney’s office in recent days as a grand jury investigates money paid to Trump during the 2016 campaign.
Additional police officers are on patrol, metal barricades have been installed on the sidewalks and bomb-sniffing dogs have made regular sweeps of buildings, which have also faced unfounded bomb threats in recent days.
A New York State court spokesman said, “Due to the nature of the increased interest in proceedings in New York City Courthouses, we have increased security, both inside and on the perimeter, and officers have been reminded to remain vigilant and maintain situational awareness.”
In a memo to staff there, Bragg said the office has also received offensive and threatening phone calls and emails. He thanked his nearly 1,600-strong staff for continuing to face “extra attention and security in our offices” and said safety remained a top priority.
“We will continue to apply the law evenly and fairly, which we do every day,” Bragg wrote.
Rev. Al Sharpton said he would pray for Bragg’s safety in Harlem. He and other Black leaders condemned Trump’s rhetoric about Bragg and billionaire George Soros, who backed groups supporting Bragg’s campaign, as “not a dog whistle, but a bullhorn of incendiary and anti-Semitic bile.”
The Grand Jury, convened by Bragg in January, has been investigating Trump’s involvement in a $130,000 payment made in 2016 to porn actor Stormy Daniels to keep her from going public about a sexual relationship she said she had with Trump last year. Trump has denied the claim.
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Associated Press writer Bobby Caina Calvan contributed to this report.