US federal investigators are searching coast to coast for a suspect terrorising a growing list of prominent critics of Donald Trump by sending them bombs – with former vice president Joe Biden and actor Robert De Niro the latest to be targeted.
Two packages for Mr Biden were intercepted in Delaware, the FBI said, while another was received at a restaurant owned by De Niro in New York City. Investigators said they matched parcels which contained pipe bombs sent to former president Barack Obama and several other Democrats this week.
The latest discoveries mean that eight vocal critics of Mr Trump have been targeted by at least 10 packages. All were intercepted and there have been no injuries.
At a press conference on Thursday, officials in New York would not discuss possible motives or details on how the packages found their way into the US postal system. Nor would they say why none of the packages had detonated, but they stressed they were still treating them as “live devices”.
“As far as a hoax device, we’re not treating it that way,” said Police Commissioner James O’Neill. The case is being treated as domestic terrorism.
The series of bomb alerts began on Monday and would spread across locations in New York, the Washington DC area and Florida. A number of them were called pipe bombs.
The first was found in the post box of billionaire businessman George Soros. Packages were also sent to a New York home of Hillary and Bill Clinton and to Mr Obama and Congresswoman Maxine Waters in Washington DC. A second package addressed to California Democrat Ms Waters was found in Los Angeles.
CNN’s New York office was evacuated on Wednesday morning after a package addressed to former CIA director John Brennan was found in its mailroom. In Florida, another package was discovered that was addressed to former attorney general Eric Holder.
Officials would not comment on multiple reports that a number of packages had originated in southern Florida and whether that was where the focus of the investigation was now narrowing.
The packages are being analysed by the FBI at its laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, with authorities reluctant to go public with more than board patterns.
At least five of the packages, including the one sent to Mr Soros, involved manila envelopes addressed to prominent Trump critics and carried a similar arrangement of labelling and US postage stamps.
Investigators were seeking forensic clues left on the unexploded packages and were following other leads. A number of the packages had travelled through the US Postal Service, although at an afternoon press conference it was said none had been seen for at least eight hours.
However, John Miller, the New York Police Department’s deputy commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism, said that authorities “don’t know” yet if other devices were on the way to being delivered and urged Americans to remain vigilant.
That vigilance was seen in the De Niro case, with NYPD Commissioner Mr O’Neil also praising the retired detective who called the emergency services in the pre-dawn hours on Thursday because the images he was seeing on television resembled a package he had intercepted on its way to the actor.
X-ray photographs leaked to the media suggested that at least some of the packages contained pipes packed with explosive powder along with shrapnel such as pieces of glass. Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, said on Thursday that the devices were viable bombs. Although it appears that at least some of the devices had been put together poorly and may not have been able to explode.
Investigators are trying to determine whether the devices were intended to detonate or whether they were simply sent to sow fear.
Authorities were scrutinising security camera videos for signs of the bomber, Mr Cuomo told CNN, after it was discovered the package to CNN was hand delivered.
Legislators across the country have responded to the series of suspicious packages with shock and have called for a calming of rhetoric against the media – with Mr Trump having frequently targeted CNN as “fake news” – and political opponents.
However, Mr Trump and White House officials rejected suggestions that he bore any responsibility for a climate that could lead to the sending of explosives, instead blaming the media for stirring trouble.
“A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News,” Mr Trump tweeted. “It has gotten so bad and hateful that it is beyond description. Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST!”
Former CIA director John Brennan, the target of the explosive device sent to the CNN offices in New York, hit back at the president on Twitter.
“Stop blaming others. Look in the mirror. Your inflammatory rhetoric, insults, lies, & encouragement of physical violence are disgraceful. Clean up your act ... try to act Presidential. The American people deserve much better. BTW, your critics will not be intimidated into silence,” Mr Brennan said.
Ms Waters responded to the string of suspicious packages by saying she “ain’t scared” of the threats levelled against her and other prominent Democrats.
“We have to keep to doing what we’re doing in order to make this country right; that’s what I intend to do, and as the young people say, ‘I ain’t scared’,” Ms Waters told The Community for Black Creativity and News (Blavity).
“I think the president of the United States should take responsibility for the kind of violence that we are seeing for the first time in different ways,” she continued. “I think the president of the United States has been dog whistling to his constituency, making them believe that their problems are caused by those people over there.”
But not everyone was on the same page.
Speaking at an Axios event in Washington about the string of suspicious packages sent to prominent Democrats, former House speaker Newt Gingrich said the American press had “earned” being called the “enemy of the people” by Donald Trump, and that the current political climate is “everyone’s fault”.
As to why a number of Trump supporters and Trump-backing pundits have purported the suspicious packages to be a left-wing false flag conspiracy, Mr Gingrich said: “Because it’s October.” He was referring to the crucial midterm elections which are only two weeks away.
