The FBI and NYPD are investigating a death threat and white powder sent to Manhattan’s district attorney, whose office is investigating former US president Donald Trump.
The letter mailed to Alvin Bragg said “ALVIN: I AM GOING TO KILL YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!”, law enforcement sources told NBC News.
The letter also contained a small amount of white powder.
Mr Bragg’s office said the letter “was immediately contained and that the NYPD Emergency Service Unit and the NYC Department of Environmental Protection determined there was no dangerous substance.”
Markings on the envelope indicate it was mailed from Orlando, Florida, earlier this week, the sources said.
The incident comes after a week of speculation that Mr Trump would be indicted by the Manhattan district attorney over alleged hush payments made to Stormy Daniels and another adult film star.
Mr Bragg is leading the criminal investigation into whether Mr Trump paid $130,000 to Ms Daniels so that she would not reveal to the press an alleged sexual affair between them.
A grand jury had invited Mr Trump to testify in the case this week – often a sign that an indictment is close.
In a post on Truth Social, the social media platform he founded, Mr Trump warned on Friday of possible “death and destruction” if he is indicted.
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“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?” Mr Trump wrote.
“Why & who would do such a thing? Only a degenerate psychopath that truely [sic] hates the USA!”
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Mr Trump has been escalating his language in recent days as he seeks to fire up his base to show their support for him in public.
He claimed at the weekend that he would be arrested on Tuesday and called on supporters to “PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!”.
On Thursday, after Republican allies cautioned against violent protests, Mr Trump posted: “OUR COUNTRY IS BEING DESTROYED, AS THEY TELL US TO BE PEACEFUL!”
He also posted a link to an article which was illustrated with a composite image of himself with a baseball bat next to one of Mr Bragg.
Image: Stormy Daniels in Manhattan in 2018
The Stormy Daniels case is just one of a slew of criminal and civil investigations that the former president is facing.
His Trump Organization is being pursued by New York attorney general Letitia James over fraud charges, while the US Justice Department is investigating whether he removed classified documents from the White House.
He is also facing charges relating to attempts to change the Georgia election result in 2020 and the January 6 storming of Congress.
A person has been killed and several others injured after a mass shooting and fire at a Mormon church in Michigan, police have said.
Authorities said at a news conference that the suspect was shot dead by police officers, and that nine others were injured.
Two of those were said to be in critical condition, Grand Blanc Township Chief William Renye told reporters.
Image: Flames and smoke rising from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc. Pic: Julie J, @Malkowski6April / AP
He added that the suspect was a 40-year-old man from Burton, who drove his vehicle into the church and began firing rounds at the hundreds of people attending Sunday service.
The suspect used an assault rifle and deliberately started the blaze, Chief Renye said, before adding that officers believe they will find additional victims in the fire.
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Image: Pics: AP
The incident took place at around 11am local time at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc, about 50 miles north of Detroit.
In a statement on Sunday morning, Grand Blanc Township Police Department added that the church was “actively on fire” and urged the public to avoid the area.
Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer said in a statement that “my heart is breaking for the Grand Blanc community” after the shooting.
She added: “Violence anywhere, especially in a place of worship, is unacceptable. I am grateful to the first responders who took action quickly.”
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Genesee County sheriff Christopher Swanson said at around 12.20pm (5.20pm in the UK) that the “entire church is on fire”, and confirmed that people who were at the church have been evacuated.
Around 20 minutes later, the police department said the fire had been contained.
Image: The incident took place at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc
US attorney general Pam Bondi also confirmed the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are responding to the incident.
US President Donald Trump said on Truth Social that “the suspect is dead, but there is still a lot to learn”, before saying the shooting “appears to be yet another targeted attack on Christians in the United States of America”.
He added: “PRAY for the victims, and their families. THIS EPIDEMIC OF VIOLENCE IN OUR COUNTRY MUST END, IMMEDIATELY!”
In the wake of the shooting and fire, the New York Police Department said it would deploy officers to religious institutions across the city “out of an abundance of caution”.
The incident occurred the morning after Russell M Nelson, the oldest-ever president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, died at 101.
Shootings reported in North Carolina, New Orleans, Texas
Meanwhile, authorities responded to a mass shooting at a coastal town in North Carolina late on Saturday, where three people were killed.
At least eight others were injured in that incident, where someone opened fire from a boat into a crowd at a bar.
Another shooting took place at a south Texas casino early on Sunday, with seven people shot and two killed.
A woman was also killed, and three others were injured in Bourbon Street, New Orleans, early on Sunday after a shooting.
It was one sentence among the many words Donald Trump spoke this week that caught my attention.
Midway through a jaw-dropping news conference where he sensationally claimed to have “found an answer on autism”, he said: “Bobby (Kennedy) wants to be very careful with what he says, but I’m not so careful with what I say.”
The US president has gone from pushing the envelope to completely unfiltered.
Last Sunday, moments after Charlie Kirk‘s widow Erika had publicly forgiven her husband’s killer, Mr Trump told the congregation at his memorial service that he “hates his opponents”.
Image: President Donald Trump embraces Charlie Kirk’s widow Erika. Pic: AP
The president treats professional disapproval not as a liability but as evidence of authenticity, fuelling the aura that he is a challenger of conventions.
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“I’m really good at this stuff. Your countries are going to hell,” he told his audience, deriding Europe’s approach to immigration as a “failed experiment of open borders”.
Image: Mr Trump addresses the UN General Assembly in New York. Pic: Reuters
Then came a U-turn on Ukraine, suggesting the country could win back all the land it has lost to Russia.
Most politicians would be punished for inconsistency, but Mr Trump recasts this as strategic genius – framing himself as dictating the terms.
It is hard to keep track when his expressed hopes for peace in Ukraine and Gaza are peppered with social media posts condemning the return of Jimmy Kimmel to late-night television.
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2:29
Trump’s major shift in Ukraine policy
Perhaps most striking of all is his reaction to the indictment of James Comey, the FBI director he fired during his first term.
In theory, this should raise questions about the president’s past conflicts with law enforcement, but he frames it as vindication, proof that his enemies fall while he survives.
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0:49
Ex-FBI chief: ‘Costs to standing up to Trump’
Mr Trump has spent much of his political career cultivating an image of a man above the normal consequences of politics, law or diplomacy, but he appears to feel more invincible than ever.
Donald Trump has ordered the deployment of US troops to “war-ravaged Portland” in the state of Oregon, authorising the use of “full force” if needed.
The US president said he was directing US defence secretary Pete Hegseth to make the move in order to protect the city “and any of our ICE facilities under siege from attack by Antifa and other domestic terrorists”.
Mr Trump did not specify whether he would send in National Guard troops or the US military.
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1:02
Fatal shooting at ICE facility in Dallas
The ICE facility in Portland has been targeted by protesters since June, sometimes leading to violent clashes.
On Friday, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said demonstrators had “repeatedly attacked and laid siege to an ICE processing centre” there, adding that several arrests were made.
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“Rose City Antifa, a recently designated domestic terrorist organization, illegally doxed ICE officers. They published their home address online and on public flyers. Individuals associated with Antifa also sent death threats to DHS personnel,” DHS wrote on X.
Speaking in the Oval Office on Thursday, Mr Trump said “anarchy” was taking place in Portland.
He said: “You go out to Portland, people die out there. Many people have died over the years in Portland. Portland is, I don’t know how anybody lives there. It’s amazing, but it’s, it’s anarchy out there. That’s what they want. They want anarchy.”
In separate comments, Mr Trump said people were “out of control” in Portland and pledged to “stop that very soon”.
Image: People protest against the Trump’s immigration policies in Portland. Pic: Reuters
Image: ICE agents charge towards protesters in Portland. Pic: Reuters
After Mr Trump’s announcement, Oregon’s Democratic governor Tina Kotek said she was reaching out to the White House for more information.
“We have been provided no information on the reason or purpose of any military mission. There is no national security threat in Portland. Our communities are safe and calm,” she said.
Portland’s mayor Keith Wilson said in a statement that the “number of necessary troops is zero, in Portland and any other American city”.
But Republicans supported the move. US labour secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who previously served as a Republican house representative for an Oregon district, said she had seen how “lawlessness” had turned Portland into a “crime-ridden war zone”.
In a post on X, she thanked Mr Trump “for taking action to keep our ICE facilities protected and Make America Great Again”.
Trump has sent military troops to the Democratic-controlled cities of Los Angeles and Washington DC so far in his second presidency. He has also discussed doing the same in Memphis and New Orleans, which are also Democratic strongholds.