SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WCIA) – The FBI and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service are investigating after election officials in states across the country received suspicious packages. On Friday, one of those packages arrived in Springfield at the Illinois State Board of Elections.
“We knew who they were supposedly coming from,” Matt Dietrich, the public information officer for the State Board of Elections, said. “It was some operation that calls itself the United States Traitor [Elimination] Army, so by the time we got to late in the week, around 20 other states had already received these mailings.”
Dietrich said local law enforcement and federal officials responded to the incident. They say the building was evacuated around noon on Friday.
“Because we expected something like this to be coming, we knew to not open mail that looks suspicious or look like it might match this description,” Dietrich said.
The FBI said some of the letters had an unknown substance. Dietrich said the FBI did a field test on the envelope and that they didn’t find anything harmful.