A letter headed for the Fulton County elections office has been found by federal officials, and — like related letters sent to election offices in Washington state — has tested positive for deadly fentanyl, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced Friday afternoon.
Raffensperger said on X, formerly Twitter, that the letter was sent by “domestic terrorists.”
During a news conference Thursday at Fulton County’s new centralized elections hub, he said his office was notified the previous day that a potentially dangerous envelope was in the mail from elsewhere in the country, heading for the local elections office. The content of any letter in the envelope was not disclosed.
Postal and law enforcement officials hoped to intercept it, but trained the potential recipients in safety measures as a precaution.
Raffensperger said Thursday that warnings went out to all Georgia counties to watch for similar threats. Contact with fentanyl can kill “very quickly, very easily,” he said.
“We’re working with our state and federal partners to determine if any additional Georgia officials are being targeted,” Raffensperger said in a Thursday-morning news release. “Domestic terrorists will not trample on our right to free and fair elections. Election officials should be free from fear and intimidation, which is why I’ve called on the General Assembly to increase penalties for election interference.
“We will work tirelessly to ensure that Georgia elections remain free, fair, and secure.”
Also speaking at the Thursday news conference, Fulton County Commission Chair Robb Pitts said local officials’ first concern is employee safety. Local and federal law enforcement agencies are investigating, he said.
Incidents like this have persisted since the controversial election of 2020, when Pitts himself had round-the-clock personal protection from threats, he said. It shows “crazy people out there” will go to any lengths to disrupt elections, Pitts said.
Reports emerged Wednesday of envelopes containing suspicious powder arriving at election offices in four Washington state counties, as workers processed ballots from Tuesday’s election. Two of the envelopes field-tested positive for fentanyl, according to the Associated Press.
The election offices in King, Skagit, Spokane and Pierce counties were briefly evacuated. No one was injured, and authorities were investigating.
Envelopes in King County, which includes Seattle, and Spokane County, tested positive for fentanyl. The envelope in Pierce County, which includes Tacoma, contained baking soda, the Associated Press reported.
Tacoma police spokesperson William Muse told The Seattle Times that the envelope also included a message “something to the effect of stopping the election,” but mentioned no candidate, issue or group.
The Washington secretary of state’s office said King County election officials also got a fentanyl-laced envelope during the August primary, while a suspicious envelope received then by Okanogan County officials was deemed harmless.
The envelope headed for Fulton has been connected through postmarks to the ones sent to Washington state counties, Raffensperger said. It’s not clear if it’s addressed to an individual, but it is certainly heading for the election office, he said.
There’s no word yet on a possible motive, according to the secretary of state.
“This is domestic terrorism and it needs to be condemned by anyone who holds elective office or wants to hold elective office anywhere in America,” Raffensperger said.
Raffensperger praised Fulton’s new centralized elections hub, used for the first time on Tuesday, as a great example of improvements in processing and securing Georgia elections.
Pitts said use of the new elections hub this year was a trial run for the much bigger election next year, when the entire country will be watching results from Georgia’s largest county. In a sense, he said, this threat is part of that.
“It’s my personal belief that this is just probably a forerunner for what we can be prepared for in 2024,” he said.
Reporter Mark Niesse contributed to this story.
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