The New York Police Department investigated several suspicious bags left outside the Trump Tower yesterday afternoon. Citing police sources, the New York Post reported:
“Four bags containing cell phones and an unknown device were found lying by flowerpots near a Starbucks on the second floor of the atrium in the midtown Manhattan building at around 4:30 p.m.”
It has further been reported that a custodian first spotted two suspicious bags and flagged the bags to law enforcement. The authorities found another two bags when they arrived at the scene.
Situation going on at Trump Tower, heavy police presence including NYPD Bomb Squad and ESU. pic.twitter.com/N54zz9BX8j
— Harrison (@Harrisonsmartin) July 27, 2018
After a tense few hours that saw law enforcement personnel swarming Trump Tower, which sat frozen amid congestion from emergency vehicles, the NYPD gave the all clear after it found that the devices found in the atrium pose no danger to the public:
The bomb scare at Trump Tower comes weeks after California Democratic representative Maxine Waters encouraged attacks against members of Trump’s administration. Late last month, the politician said:
“Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up and if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”
More recently, just this week, Democratic Senator Cory Booker lambasted supporters of Trump’s Supreme Court nominee by calling them “complicit in evil,” before encouraging activists to “get up in the faces” of some Congress members, days later.