Bill Galvin and six Massachusetts House members received suspicious Santa Cruz letters on Friday. The mailings reached offices in Massachusetts while the FBI and US Postal Inspection Service examined similar letters sent nationwide.
Galvin said his office received an envelope addressed to the Elections Division, and he said staff kept working on the upcoming election. He said, “The Elections Division’s work was uninterrupted, and my staff remains focused on administering the upcoming election.”
Massachusetts offices on Friday
The letters went to Galvin’s Boston office and the district offices of Jake Auchincloss, Katherine Clark, Stephen Lynch, Seth Moulton, Ayanna Pressley and Lori Trahan. Employees in those offices contacted authorities after the mail arrived.
House members and their staff had already been warned on Thursday by House Sergeant at Arms William P. McFarland about reports of letters with suspicious white powder substances. That warning came before the Friday mailings in Massachusetts.
At Seth Moulton’s Salem office, five staffers left so Salem Police could investigate. Neesha Suarez said the staffers were allowed to work remotely for the rest of the day.
Moulton letter testing
Police and FBI officials tested a white, powdery substance inside Moulton’s letter but did not identify any substances of concern. The letter came in a plain white envelope with a San Antonio postmark and a return address in New York, NY, according to a picture provided by Moulton’s office.
The FBI and US Postal Inspection Service said they are investigating a series of suspicious mailings sent to various addresses nationwide, including Secretary of State offices and their related election offices. They said, “Some of the letters contained an unknown substance and we are working closely with our law enforcement partners to respond to each incident.”
What remains at issue is whether the letters posed any real danger or were part of a wider hoax pattern. For the offices that received them, the immediate next step was to contact law enforcement and clear staff out of the Salem office while the investigation continued.
