Judge in Trump civil fraud case was sent envelope with white powder, source says
The envelope never made it to Judge Arthur Engoron, but caused an emergency response at the courthouse.
Judge Arthur Engoron, who handed down a $355 million ruling against former President Donald Trump in his civil fraud trial, was sent an envelope containing white powder on Wednesday, causing an emergency response at his New York City courthouse, a source with direct knowledge of the incident confirmed to NBC News.
The judge and his staff were not exposed to the substance — his mail is pre-screened on a daily basis and was intercepted before it reached him, the source said. A court officer opened the letter and powder fell out, according to the New York Police Department, exposing the officer and another court employee to the substance, the source said. The New York City Fire Department said the two refused any medical treatment. The threatening letter was first reported by ABC News.
The threat is far from the first against the judge. Police on Long Island responded to a bomb threat at his home last month, hours before closing arguments in the Trump trial were scheduled to begin.
Someone is about to meet the Postal Inspection Service and have a very bad time. You do not fuck with the mail. They will find your ass.
Unless you're Louis DeJoy, then you can fuck with the mail all you want with impunity.
Oh yeah I forgot about that story arc.
I didn't realize he's still post master general. There's a Time article claiming he's been doing a lot of beneficial stuff now. But I honestly have no idea how biased it is toward any agenda.
He saw which way the wind was blowing, and decided to use his powers for good. I don't think he's stupid, just unscrupulous.
Yeah, I got the impression that he's just opportunistic.
Wow interesting article, really paints him in a different light
Just an FYI, Biden could remove him anytime he wants. He won't. He has appointed enough postal governors to get a new Postmaster General.
I feel like it would be pretty easy to untraceably send a single letter. False return address, address written slowly with your alternate hand (or printed), dropped in an unmonitored street mailbox a few hours away from your home…how would USPIS find such a person?
In that situation, they wouldn’t find them.
But in many other situations, criminals do dumb things like writing their return address.
Municipal or private CCTV by the mailbox? In the UK at least it's quite common.
UK's one of the most surveilled countries on earth tho innit?
Printed? Your printer leaves a unique pattern on all its documents. Oooh
Dropped in a mailbox, oooh the neighbour across the road has a ring doorbell
Didn't turn off your phone? Ooooh
Let's be honest though these people probably took a photo of them posting it, and now it's on up on twitter.
My money would be on Truth Social or a QAnon/Maga facebook group.
People underestimate how prevalent camera doorbells are now thanks to ring. At my girlfriends place about 75 percent of her neighbors on the block have em. Just installed a eufy for my mom a little while ago and she's super untech savvy. Her apt building also has about 60 percent door cams.
Super helpful tool with tracking bad guys...but also it's just so creepy and dystopian.
I was trying to see who a stray dog belonged to in my own neighborhood, and pushing the button and talking into these little lenses on every door was so weird.
Neighborhoods are now enclaves full of suspicious hermits...
I just like the idea that somebody might be stupid enough to put their real return address on the envelope, and your suggestion is the first time that it's occurred to them that they might not need to do that.
Agent Jack Danger is on the case.
It’s pronounced Donger.
I mean, for now, all of these systems are crumbling beneath our feet.
USPS was extremely reliable. Now I hear from folks "Oh I sent it via mail, no wonder you never got it".
This includes the teeth that these systems have
The mail is as reliable as ever. What are you talking about?
He is talking out of his ass. They made the mail more reliable, by removing stupid routes and some unnecessary air mail. It now takes an extra day to send stuff cross country, according to the mailing guidelines... but the previous service guidelines were off by a half or full day anyway for that distance.
Terrorists, plain and simple
Or you can use the alternative spelling: r-e-p-u-b-l-i-c-a-n
They are all domestic terrorists I hear. From them. I heard it from them.
Republicunt?
Cuckservatives
I feel like this kind of behavior can be attributed to the unintended consequences of social media engagement algorithms, black boxes taking over peoples minds and turning them into angry thralls, it's like a natural disaster. Trump was basically an internet meme and he evolved into this
American education has also been nerfed to the masses, so critical thinking skills were destroyed. They created a system of useful idiots for control, rather than educating a nation for prosperity. This has been decades in the making.
Trace the money.
I don't believe in conspiratorial thinking though. I don't think this happened on purpose. Social media algorithms were built to maximize engagement by collecting user data, the algorithms learned that people engage more if posts amplifying negative emotions are amplified, and that explains how stuff like this happened. It's actually scarier to realize the state of society is because of an accident caused by negligent capitalism rather than tyranny.
https://youtu.be/3VEkzweBJPM?si=fb3R_JpkOngOoM6p
Precisely. I think this is absolutely the "paperclip problem." It's a machine designed and tuned specifically for engagement + profit. That's it. Humanity or morals or decency aren't part of the equation.
To them, so what if it causes a breakdown of society and generations of smoothbrained internet-addicted feral ghouls? "Look at the ad revenue! Look at the fat happy shareholders! We're doing such a good job. We're changing lives."
Was neglecting capitalism the mistake or the design?
People were sending white powders in the mail before social media.
Social media exacerbates it, but extremism is a social/ cultural acceptance issue.
It's the level that behavior has been amplified that's scary and unusual, before the internet it was only the most extreme fringe groups. It isn't normal to go online and feel like a 50/50 chance everybody you meet is an extremist. That's a recent thing just sometime within the last 10 years and it's never been like that before ever
Anyone remember anthrax and ricin scares of days past?
Yea there was one at my university for ricin which ended up being a false positive
In my first IT job, this type of incident was part of our threat model.
This was pre-cloud and our servers were all in the same building.
If an envelope full of white power arrives to the building and the entire building is closed for days to assess and clean, how can we keep the business working remotely with zero lead time? Good times.
Today all the rage is businesses going to the cloud...
Back then we were terrified that one day... ✉️💨...the cloud would come to you.
Uhhh - so two employees were exposed to a yet unknown substance that has to be at least considered to be harmful and were even allowed to refuse medical treatment? Am I missing something here?
shit they'll probably be charged for the medical treatment. Every Americans knee-jerk reaction these days is avoid the hospital and ambulances for fear of medical debt wiping us out.
Until we know what the substance was we could be missing a lot. The letter could have been more of a threat than an attempt. Maybe it's just baby powder or maybe they just didn't breathe any of it in. The powder is probably just presued harmful until proven otherwise. Does that help clarify? In my opinion this article shouldn't have been released in this form. It's to wordy with to little information.
Yeah, the article isn't all that great. Still, the fact that the two exposed employees refused medical treatment suggests to me, that the nature of the substance at least wasn't yet known at that time, since it shouldn't be necessary to even offer that, if the substance was known to be something harmless like baby powder.
Cheers, though!
A: You think we should call the ambulance? B: Nah, I didn't even touch it, and it's probably nothing anyway.
"Refused medical treatment"
B: Nah, I cannot afford medical care. I'm only covered if my life is clearly in danger.
For the record, you can always call an ambulance for people.
Even without their consent. And even in the us, there won’t be a cost incurred until they accept treatment (which is why you wind up with absurdly expensive bandaids.)
So if you think somebody might need some help, it’s better to call than not- this is particularly true if you may have some liability.
Also, every state has some version of a law that requires calling for aid (that is satisfied by reporting to 911). They’re typically referred to as Good Samaritan laws.
(If they refuse treatment to professionals, that’s their business, you’re clear of further liability; if the ambulance wants to insist they can either call cops and force the matter; or wait till they go unconscious and exploit implied consent.)
Putting it like that, yeah, sounds about right.
You have the right to refuse treatment at any time you want.
Now, there may be other things going on, like observation and isolation. There’s not a lot that can be done anyhow; until symptoms of something start showing up, most likely the fastest way to verify what treatment is appropriate is to run tests on the powder.
That’s the kind of thing that gets put at the front of the line.
Probably just cornstarch or baby powder. But also, both those could conceivably be a carrier for something.
If I was their boss I’d go with the “and let you spread it to your family?” Guilt trip instead.
If it was actually anthrax, it has an incubation period of 1 to 3 days and a prodromal phase that can last anywhere from 1 to 6 days. Their exposure would have been inhalation which does carry the worst forms of the illness and the worst prognosis, but they'd have at least a couple days before symptoms start showing up and there are antitoxin and immunoglobulin treatments available. There's not really a post-exposure prophylaxis, per se, and giving someone the treatments unnecessarily would be incredibly expensive.
And I just wonder why these guys aren't wearing at least gloves and an n95?
Yeah, that's a really good point.
That said, so was Don Jr.
So I have no idea what is going on.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/hazmat-teams-spotted-at-don-jrs-florida-home-after-white-powder-discovered
That's just Don Jr.'s Silk Road order coming in.
Don Jr is sending white powder to the judge. Let's hope he got his baggies mixed up and Don is snorting anthrax right now.
Maybe it's Russian interference. Send white power derived envelopes to prominent players on both sides to get the people riled up against each other.
Or one of the two sides trying to shift blame. Either is possible, but we wouldn't be in this predicament if a certain someone had decided to not try and cheat at basically everything in life.
What is it? 2001 again?
I wonder if the sender will do their federal and state sentences concurrently or consecutively.