Several "suspicious" envelopes received at Arizona GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake's campaign office were tested and found not to contain any powder or other harmful substance, but the letters did contain "derogatory and vulgar statements," according to a Phoenix Police Department spokesperson.
The spokesperson, Donna Rossi, said in a statement to The Hill that police were called to Lake's campaign office on Nov. 5 after a volunteer reported finding an envelope the day before that contained a white powder substance and a letter where the writer used vulgar language.
The volunteer said the letter was thrown in the trash, where it was disposed of by cleaning staff. Later, the same volunteer reported finding two similar envelopes.
Rossi commented that the campaign office's head of security called the Phoenix police a day later when learning of the letters and said they were still sealed and felt like they contained a substance.
But the lab's analysis of the envelopes shows "no powder present and no harmful substance in either of the envelopes," said Rossi.
The campaign office's head of security called the police a day later when he learned of the letters, Rossi said. Upon examining the two remaining letters, he found that they were still sealed and felt as though they contained a powdery substance.
While the letters did contain "derogatory and vulgar statements," Rossi said that the lab's analysis showed that "there was no powder present and no harmful substance in either of the envelopes."
Meanwhile, Caroline Wren, a senior campaign adviser for the campaign, told Phoenix CBS affiliate KPHO that the envelopes that were tested were not the ones initially reported as having powder in them.
"The paper that she had thrown into the trash, the cleaners had come, you know, they usually come around 5 or something like that and had thrown out and taken and emptied out the trash," said Wren. "So there were two envelopes that matched and looked very similar to the one that she had opened, that she had set aside. Those were the envelopes that they had confiscated to take for testing.”
The winner of the gubernatorial race between Lake and Democrat challenger Katie Hobbs remains undetermined almost a week after Election Day.
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