Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg arrives at the District Attorney’s office as his office investigates $130,000 paid in the final weeks of former U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign to Stormy Daniels, a porn star who said she had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006 when he was married to his current wife Melania, in New York City, U.S., March 24, 2023.
David Dee Delgado | Reuters
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg was threatened with assassination in a letter containing powder, hours after former President Donald Trump warned Friday of “potential death & destruction” if he is indicted by a grand jury in a criminal case led by Bragg.
“ALVIN: I AM GOING TO KILL YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!”” said the typewritten note in a letter contained in an envelope addressed to Bragg, WNBC reported, citing law enforcement sources.
The letter, containing an Orlando, Florida, postmark from Tuesday, was found in the DA’s mail room in a lower Manhattan building after being received at 11:40 a.m. ET on Friday. The white powder in the envelope was found to be non-hazardous, the New York Police Department told CNBC.
A DA spokeswoman said, “The D.A. has informed the office that it was immediately contained and that the NYPD Emergency Service Unit and the NYC Department of Environmental Protection determined there was no dangerous substance.”
NYPD investigators and the FBI, which has an office close by, were at the scene investigating the letter.
The threat to Bragg is one of several hundreds of threats that have come in recent weeks as the DA’s office nears the end of its investigation of Trump, a senior New York law enforcement official told WNBC.
Several dozen of those threats were considered to seriously threaten direct harm to Bragg, though their credibility varies, according to the official.
Security officials are closely watching the threats and investigating, the law enforcement official added.
Bragg is investigating a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels by Trump’s then-lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen shortly before the 2016 presidential election.
In an office-wide email to staffers Friday afternoon, Bragg wrote , “I know it hasn’t been easy” with the “press attention and security around our office,” according to a source who received the email, NBC News reported.
Bragg also thanked staffers fr their “strength and professionalism during this time.”
“We will continue to apply the law evenly and fairly,” he wrote.
A grand jury has been hearing testimony in the Trump probe but had the day off Friday.
Trump predicted last weekend that he would be arrested Tuesday in Bragg’s investigation, but that did not happen.
On Thursday, Trump lashed out in a social media post about Bragg, calling him a George “Soros-backed animal.”
On Friday morning, after 1 a.m., Trump suggested Bragg was “a degenerate psychopath that truly hates the USA” as he condemned the investigation and warned of the potential of violence if he is charged.
“What kind of person can charge another person, in this case a former President of the United States, who got more votes than any sitting President in history, and leading candidate (by far!) for the Republican Party nomination, with a Crime, when it is known by all that NO Crime has been committed, & also known that potential death & destruction in such a false charge could be catastrophic for our Country?” Trump wrote.
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, has said she will dance in the streets if Trump is charged in the case.
She accepted the $130,000 hush money payment from Cohen to keep her quiet about an alleged one-time sexual tryst with Trump. He denies having sex with the pornographic film actor.