Several more U.S. Senate district offices have received letters containing a suspicious powder, though the powder has been found to be harmless, according to reports from CBS News. The news comes after the Senate sergeant-at-arms, Terrance Gainer, announced Wednesday that three district offices received threatening letters with powder that was also deemed to be harmless. The district office of House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) reportedly received one of the letters. In the alert to congressional offices, Gainer stated the sender “indicated that additional letters containing a powdery substance will be arriving at more Senate offices and that some of these letters may contain actual harmful material.”
Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central also received letters, without any powder substances, filled with rhetoric condemning the US government, Wall Street and the influence of money in American politics.
“We’ve responded to several suspicious powder letters in Manhattan. The investigation is ongoing. Preliminary results indicate the powder is harmless,” said New York FBI spokesman Peter Donald.
The messages, postmarked from a fake address in Oregon and signed “the MIB”, claimed that the sender had already posted 100 other letters to Senate offices – 10 of which were said to contain a deadly poison.