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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| Donald Trump Jr.'s wife Vanessa was rushed to the emergency room today after opening a package addressed to Trump Jr. which contained an unidentified white powder. | |
| The package was sent to Trump Jr.'s Manhattan apartment building. | |
| ABC News reports that Vanessa and two others were decontaminated by firefighters at the scene, and President Trump's daughter-in-law was then rushed to the hospital for further examination as a precaution. | |
| Police and Secret Service are investigating so time will tell what was in the envelope and hopefully agents will be able to trace its origins. | |
| At the time of reporting, investigators believe the substance is not hazardous. | |
| The mystery letter will certainly serve as a warning that Trump's family could at any time be targeted, even in the safety of their own well-secured home. | |
| Today's story is reminiscent of the anthrax attacks that occurred just a week after the terrorist attack on 9-11-2001. | |
| Letters containing an unknown substance later known to be weaponized anthrax spores were sent through the U.S. mail system to prominent politicians and journalists. | |
| The attacks caused a wave of panic and propelled the narrative that 9-11 was just the beginning and terror would be a new way of life for Americans. | |
| The anthrax attacks were used by the Bush administration to underscore the weapons of mass destruction myth, pivoting American consciousness from wanting to go after Osama bin Laden and set our sights on the invasion of Iraq to dismantle their biological weapons program. | |
| Mr. President, in your speeches now, you rarely talk or mention Osama bin Laden. | |
| Why is that? | |
| Well, I don't know where he is. | |
| You know, I just don't spend that much time on him, at least to be honest with you. | |
| Early on in that case, investigators determined the strain of anthrax was of the AIMS strain and therefore must have been perpetrated by someone working within the U.S., not by a foreign actor. | |
| But even with that knowledge, Colin Powell was sent to the U.N. with a vial full of white powder to gain support for the Iraq War. | |
| The FBI, overseen by Robert Mueller at the time, by the way, Made all sorts of bumbles. | |
| Initially, they pinned the letters on a retired bioweapons scientist named Stephen Hatfield. | |
| Hatfield would later win a $4.6 million settlement in 2008 for being wrongly accused, but only after his reputation had been thoroughly destroyed. | |
| The FBI then pinned the attacks on a man named Bruce Ivins, a senior biodefense researcher at Maryland's Fort Detrick military installation. | |
| He would commit suicide shortly thereafter. | |
| The only evidence the FBI offered linking Ivins to the attacks was an empty flask they say Ivins used to grow the Ames strain on his downtime. | |
| However, people familiar with what it would take to grow a colony of anthrax the size that was used in these attacks said it would be impossible that Ivins could do that on his own time without being noticed. | |
| And in 2011, after the FBI had formally closed its investigation, the National Academy of Sciences concluded that the anthrax found in the flask could not be traced back to anthrax contained in the letters, and they cast doubt on the FBI's findings. | |
| But the damage had already been done. |
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