Weve been through things like this before and much worse. Im never surprised by the unmachl unmacu unmatched resiliency or city displays. Thank you also to the media for broadcasting the photos nypd released because it certainly helped workers around our city identify additional packages and helped move forward with this investigation. Thank you. Good afternoon, im jeff berman United States attorney for the Southern District of new york. Five days ago on october 22nd Law Enforcement recovered the first device from a residence of george soros. Over the last five days as more packages were found across the country delivered to former president s, Public Officials and public figures or Law Enforcement community, federal, state and local has worked day and night together with other prosecutors from my office to identify and apprehend the perpetrator that has now happened. Today my office has filed a complaint against caesar sayoc charging him with multiple crimes. Specifically the defendant is charged in five counts that include illegally mailing and interstate transportation of explosives and threatening a former president of the United States. As alleged in the complaint the defendant mailed disruptive devices to citizens of the country who currently held or have held public offices. Former attorney general eric holder, Congress Person maxine waters, cory booker, former cia director john brennen and former director of National IntelligenceJames Clapper. The defendants conduct as charged is cowardly and reprehensible and totally inathema to our democracy. And now the defendant faces a total of 58 years in prison. This is an ongoing and active investigation. We will not rest until these crimes are fully investigated and the defendant or defendants are brought to justice. I want to take a moment to thank our partners, the joint Terrorism Task force, the fbi, the nypd, u. S. Postal inspection service, new york state police, the atf, the hardworking career prosecutors and investigators of the Terrorism Unit of the Southern District of new york. And id also like to thank the extraordinary cooperation we received from the Southern District of florida. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is gary barksdale, deputy chief of the United StatesPostal Inspection Service. Id like to thank many of our partners who participated in this investigation with fbi, atf secret service, new york police department, and many local and state Law Enforcement agencies who provided valuable asestitance. Truly i can say this is the way Law Enforcement is supposed to work. This was a massive investigation and was well coordinated with each agency bringing special expertise to the table. But i would also like to recognize the many postal employees who we think of as our eyes and ears. We appreciate the diligence and awareness. In fact, it was a postal employee this morning that alerted us to one of these suspicious parcels. We in the Postal Inspection Service have a great deal of expertise in responding to and investigating suspicious mail. Postal inspectors are trained to write, respond and investigate Dangerous Items in the mail. These dangerous mail investigation specialists are highly proficient in the use of stateoftheart equipment. Fortunately in this case none of the devices detonated and there were no injuries. Our postal inspectors remain vigilant and monitor postal facilities to determine whether there are additional mailings that have not yet been discovered. Our postal employees, our customers and the American Public. Good afternoon. The secret service director. Just as the other speakers have emphasized, i just want to comment on the importance of cooperation here. We were in the forefront of this with receiving early packages on tuesday and wednesday and fully engaged with the joint Terrorism Task force and other federal partners and want to acknowledge the great work done by the fbi, atf, Postal Service inspectors, new york city police, Capitol Police and the different states involved. New york, florida, california, maryland and even the district of columbia. And so i also want to spend just a few minutes to emphasize how seriously the secret Service Takes these threats, how important it is to provide protection to our protectees including former president s and vice president. And just thank our agents and analysts who not only investigate cyber and Financial Crime but provide world class protection to our protectees. I think theyve done outstanding work here. I would just remark since tuesday along with director wray this has been our number one focus of the agency is to find the perpetrates of these incidents and bring him to justice. Thank you. Mr. Wray, can you tell us along the lines how fast this moved . When did your folks isolate the fingerprint . So each of the devices was being brought to what are called total containment vehicles to our lab, and they were coming kind of seriotom, and first two devices were the ones sent to president obama and d. C. Congresswoman waters. We started receiving information over the course of the last 24 to 36 hours. Question for director wray and attorney general sessions. Can you describe your reaction when you got worried there was a latent fingerprint that might lead you to suspect, and also could you give us a sense of why the device what was the second part of the question . So on the first part my reaction to hearing that we had a possible match just validated my unbelievable faith and confidence in the men and women of Law Enforcement and in particular of the fbi lab. Theres a reason why the fbis lab is known as one of the very best in the world. And the folks who work there are extraordinary. And once i knew they had a print i was pretty confident wed be able to find the right person. As far as the devices themselves its important to say as is in the complaint that even if the devices, and were still trying to determine whether or not they were functional as they say, so weve been doing all kinds of analysis on that to make a definitive determination, but they did contain intergetic material when if subjected to the right combination of heat or shock or friction could be dangerous to the public. And the public should treat any device like that as important. Attorney general sessions, could you tell us plainly why was he targeting democrats . I dont know. Other than what you might normally expect. He might be a part or appears to be a partisan. But that is determined on the facts. Is he cooperating . Were not going to be discussing where the investigation stands at this time. What role do you believe the rhetoric in the political arena might have played in this, and is that giving you more work . Were focused not on the talk but on the work. The work of the men and women of Law Enforcement here and the work that was done over the last week is something that should make every american proud and grateful. And its too early at this stage to be discussing motivation in this particular case. Just to follow up, are you concerned that nasty, political rhetoric might motivate someone whos predisposed to violence to act out . Were concerned of people committing acts of violence under any motivation. Director, do you believe that hes the only one involved in this campaign . And you continue to make reference to other devices that might be out there. Do you have any sense of how many are still in the street . As i said at the outset and i think the attorney general said as well, this is very much an active and ongoing investigation. We do believe that weve caught the right guy. But we also know that this is an ongoing investigation, and theres a lot of work to be done, which means theres still plenty of unanswered questions. When did you first brief President Trump on having a suspect in custody, and if you could say what was his reaction . Im not going to get into a discussion of the president. I will say i received a congratulatory call from the president on the way over here. And he was proud of the work done not just by the fbi but all our multiple partners in states. The professionals that exist are extraordinary, better than theyve ever been and exactly what the doctor ordered for this country at this time. Okay, thats the end of that press conference we have been listening to fbi officials, nypd officials and attorney general Jeff Sessions who did say moments ago that caesar sayoc whos been charged with five federal crimes may have been a partisan. This is important because right wing media for the last few days have been suggesting that this is false flag, a democrat who might be trying to gin up support by casting democrats in a bad shadow up to the midterm elections. This guy might be facing 58 years in prison. Also with us the former chief spokesperson for the department of justice. Tom, im going to ask you to hold on for a second. But i want to go to matt because matt and i have spoken now for the last three nights in a row about this nonsense false flag theres a word we used to use in canada that i cant use on tv ive been hearing about the republicans talking about how this was democrats trying to make republicans look bad. One the statement Jeff Sessions made about this, Political Violence and this came from a partisan. Two and two fbi director chris wray calling it a hoax. And given what the president tweeted this morning when he put the word bomb in quotes. And then the third thing was this last question that i think wray gave a very weird answer to when he was asked when did you tell the white house when did you tell the president , and you wouldnt answer that. The answer is always we told them immediately because you always do tell the white house immediately if its a matter of this importance. You keep them updated in realtime. The reason thats a problematic answer, he made clear in the press conference that they found this suspect yesterday. They were onto him yesterday. He made clear they called the Florida Department of Law Enforcement last night. Its hard to believe they wouldnt tell the white house yesterday. If you have the department telling the white house about this suspect yesterday and you have the president then tweeting this morning flanning the flames of a conspiracy theory, that is just a reprehensible thing for the president to do, and i can see why the fbi director didnt want to get into that. It was going really well until this bomb thing started happening and it was affecting turnout im going to stop there, matt, because im a television host. Tom winter, lets talk about what he heard out of here. Tell me what we now know. Okay, i think the key thing is they were able to get a fingerprint and then additional dna evidence of connected devices. The dna is key here. In the state of florida if you were arrested for certain violations, certain felony counts, you have to provide dna at the time of booking. If you are convicted that dna goes to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The fdle is kind of like the cops cop in florida. They oversee agencies, do high profile political investigations. I would say personally theyre one of the most professional organizations that i interact with as a police reporter. And they keep a database of the dna. As we reported yesterday that they were circling florida as for where these packages came from, at that point once they were able to get some dna they would have been able to see if they had a match in the fdles database. Director wray said that. And once they had that match from there therapy obviously able to identify this individual and from there start to make their moves and start to conduct surveillance. We had some indications at 9 00 this morning they were moving a significant amount of surveillance into this area of florida and had been for some time. Obviously at that point within an hour or two we have an arrest. A few other things i want to touch on. Director wray confirming some key information. Up to 13 devices, that includes the device sent to senator harris in california. We know that theres an additional person who a package was intercepted that may bring it to 14, and thats not clear and he didnt say it in the press conference. There was a pvc pipe used to contain a potential explosive. Hes being careful here not detailing the exact explosive. That it had a small clock and it had a battery. And we know there were certain things, and im not going to describe all of them here because i dont want to tell people how to build a functional bomb. But there were certain things that made these bombs capable of operating. And he was very clear, and im going to quote the director here when he said these are not hoax devices. So in other words in his estimation, they were not intended to be a fake or get everyone fired up about a potential explosive device. Hes not calling them a hoax device. Hes calling them an actual device. So the fingerprint that we found was on a package that was sent to congresswoman waters, and in addition to that going through my notes here from the press conference he did highlight there may be other packages in transit we have to keep an eye out for. We know 13 at the moment. 13 at the moment. The fbi director said there may be additional packages we have to look out for. U. S. Attorney geof berman, five counts including illegal mailing of explosives and threatening a former u. S. President. As you said at the top of the show he faces up to 58 years in jail. But i think this is huge success story, frankly, because the idea of getting a convicts dna that may be able to link them to future crimes or previous crimes clearly help them in this case. And the fdle which is normally a very organized very professional organization clearly was able to help in this. Pete williams got the first question of the press squrchs he was able to ask the director about the timing and it appears this information started coming in at least late yesterday or yesterday at some point. They started keying in on this person. And as i said before as of this morning i think high really felt like they had their person, their man. At the moment we dont yet have the criminal complaint thats going to be used to charge him. Were waiting to get that from the u. S. Attorneys office in the Southern District of new york. Having a lot of experience with this in the past, i can tell you that these things are really fluid and difficult with respect to getting the documents into the system, getting the documents before a judge. At that point its going to be transmitted to florida. So this is just a matter of paperwork at this point. Paperwork and moving people and a van around. Not necessarily teaching people how to make bomb, but in the interest of having people understand what it looks like because that did help. When the joint Terrorism Task force cept out an email on tuesday to the 22,000 Business Partners or so at a place like nbc saying this is what an envelope looks like and similar to what a device looks, and this is 1 inch pvc pipe, which is what it was. You put stuff inside and hook it up to make your bomb. You see boxes and wires on movies and complicated thing, and it is useful to know this is what a bomb can look like. Actually the bomb is smaller than this. It is smaller than that. Its only about 6 inches in length, but youve got the diameter which appears to be correct. What he was saying is the substance thats contained in there in a low explosive the substance would burn, create a decompression and you would have an explosion. This is not something that would take down a facade of a building. Going to be careful not to describe certain parts. But it could kill. It would probably likely kill you, perhaps me and perhaps injure everybody in here. So had this gone right or gone wrong and had this guy been a better we dont know what it is, been a better bomb maker or made mistakes, there are consequences. These 13 bombs could have killed a lot of people. And the director was right to point out, with explosives, im not totally comfortable saying what the explosive was, even if this dropped, if a mail carrier got into a car or vehicle accident, sometimes theres enough instability that that device could go off just through the shock of it. For instance, tatp which has been used by terrorists over in europe, thats something with a shock if you were to drop like a suitcase of tatp you wouldnt need any source of emission to set it off. It would go off on its own because its really unstable. Thats sleuthly right. Thank you for that, tom. The suspect a florida resident but originally from new york city. With me now from nbc news reporting on this with me since the beginning where this morning another package sent to cnns office this time addressed to James Clapper. Reporter indeed. In fact, ali, it was just hours before a suspect was arrested in florida that a very alert postal worker here in this post office that just opened a short while ago spotted something suspicious. Authorities now tell us it appears to be a pipeb bomb very similar to other packages picked up earlier this week. This office was shutdown for a while, they brought in a bomb squad and removed the device. The apartment buildings nearby, people were told to shelter in place. Theres a school nearby right across the street nakt, they evacuated the children. There was a health facility, they evacuated the patients. This is very busy area of new york. And that package as they found, it was addressed to James Clapper for him to be received at cnn, which only six blocks from where im standing right now. And you and i were just over at the cnn offices earlier this week. So they are crediting this postal worker. They said they had 666,000 postal workers across the country and asking them to be alert, and thats exactly what they were doing this morning. We dont know whether there are anymore of these devices out there. In fact, weve gotten reports there may be another one. We havent gotten confirmed yet, so ill let you know when we do. I want to bring in justice correspondent pete williams. What stood out to you, pete . Reporter well, the fact how quickly it moved. The first bomb out to soros monday, they start collecting them, get fmt oingerprint off of the envelopes sent to congresswoman maxine waters. And it was on record because he had a previous conviction in florida, so his fingerprints were in the system. Secondly, they say they lifted dna material from the devices inside some of the packages which they describe as a potential match. But in the Court Documents that weve just been handed here, that have just been filed in new york theres a couple of other details here. They refer to his social media, and they say that they note the misspellings on some of the packages. And they say in his publicly identifiable twitter account some of his misspellings in that were consistent with the package. For example, hillary misspelled with one l instead of two. Congresswoman Debbie Wassermannschultzs last name spelled without the c in schultz. And it says on december 24th there was a twitter post critical of president obama and george soros. So thats the evidence, and its just amazingly fast work. Let me ask you about this, pete, i was struck im sorry, ive lost communication with you so back to you. Fair enough. Tom winter im going to ask you because i was struck, Christopher Wray did not say when the president was informed about this. But when Jeff Sessions was asked and i guess he could have given the answer he doesnt have the information or didnt want to talk about it, he did say this appears to be the work of a partisan. Right. So i think one of the things when you look obviously they were onto this persons social media. These days a persons social media account provides such a trove of evidence. And he happened to be driving a van that was also a bit of an ad. Yes, the van definitely helped. So when you combine the social media, combined the spelling, that is very fascinating because that was one of the reasons in one of the ways they were able to find the unabomber because of some of peculiarities in the words he used, in some of the type of language he used. And here you have a modern day example of what was done in the unabomber investigation. To this particular person the advantage here is this person had been convicted in the state of florida of a felony. And there were fingerprints on file, a possible dna match. And they were essentially able to look at the fingerprints, match it to him and use that Florida DepartmentLaw Enforcement database to be able to sync them together. But i think its really important once they start to tie in not just you have your physical evidence, which of course is most helpful to investigators and for an eventual prosecution. You also have now the kind of antidotal evidence, which is still direct evidence. You have somebody who says every time they reference Hillary Clinton, this person or that person or the other person, they spell everything the exact same way. And thats what we see on the packages. It just helps further inform us and further helps build that case and investigation saying, hey, this is in fact the guy weve been looking for. So its fascinating. Im not surprised that pete got the documents first. Were hopeful were going to get that electronically. Well pour over them, break them down live on tv. The president once again today called for the country to unify. These terrorizing acts are despicable and have no place in our country. No place. Ive instructed authorities to spare no resource or expense in finding those responsible and bringing them to swift and certain justice. We must never allow Political Violence to take root in america. Cannot let it happen, and im committed to doing everything in my power as president to stop it. And then i could take some time to show you all the times when he has actually advocated for Political Violence, but i think youre aware of that. This message that the president gave this morning, well enough alone would have been okay. But he overshadowed it because he decided to do this. I get attacked. I think maybe more. Maybe more than anybody. I dont know. I can do the greatest thing for our country and on the networks and on different it will show bad. They will take it back fake news. Yes, fake news. But they will no matter what. He simply cannot resist. Jeff bennett is at the white house for us. Jeff, theres a mystery were going to dig into a little bit that matt miller has made it clear that theres no reason why the fbi wouldnt have told the president about the suspect last night. The white house has argued that they are fully, fully on top of this thing. And yet between last night and this afternoon the president tweeted that this seems to be he seemed to be fueling the fans of this false flag operation. That someone was talking about the bomb, he put in quotes, and it was affecting voter turnout. Thats right. And that happened after the discovery this morning of two more of those explosive devices. This happened before the president we should say was officially briefed by the department of homeland security, the fbi and the secret service. And this tweet also came out before this florida man was taken into custody. But the president suggested he viewed this bombing incident through a purely political lens. And now this, in quotes, bomb stuff happens and the momentum greatly slows. So the president really there focusing of the political costs of nice week long saga more so than the human imipact. And what you saw there at the tom of the segment of the president reading from prepared remarks calling for an end to Political Violence. But there when he went off script he talked about political hostility, how he views himself as the victim of that. Why is that . Well, because certainly we know the president sees little use in casting himself as the nations consoler. But people close to him tell me he thinks hes at his political best when hes on the offensive, doing battle with enemies real and perceived. And in this case one of those enemies happens to be a news network that was on the receiving end of one of these explosive devices, ali. Jeff, thanks very much. Jeff bennett for us at the white house. I want to bring in clint vance, and clint watts. Im going to have to say your full names. Guys, thanks very much for being with us. This guy is as tom witter was saying is a treasuretrove of information. He had social media postings, a van that indicated not only who some of his targets were but his political views. Theres dna, fingerprints. What do you make of the case the government has . Well, there was a wealth of information. I think you and i were talking two days ago and we said this guy would be found in 24 to 48 hours. There was too much. This was the yellow brick road that led to him. But, you know, the fbi director tells us it was this, it was one fingerprint. Well, that helped but realize return addresses for those envelopes for florida, it seemed logical someone would mail them from florida as opposed to ohio where he might get questioned why the return address from florida when youre in ohio. So i think the fbi started and atf and others started to front load the investigation in florida anyway. They were moving men, women resources down there. And as these other this other information developed. But this was coming from different directions. It came forensically from fingerprints, dna. I was involved in identifying the unabomber. Ted kaczynskis brother, david, had asked me to look at letters hed written, compare them to manifestoes. We realized this same thing had been done. Were looking for phraseology, for spelling. A lot of different components, men and women moving in this. But this was a very wide net thrown all over the United States, and within two or three days it was tightened to this one city in florida, this one van, this one individual. I think its a tremendous credit to Law Enforcement, to the American Public that backed them to bring this case so quickly. Realize the unabomber took 17 years. The austin, texas, bomber earlier this year took three weeks. This case was solved basically in three days. Nice job, ladies and gentlemen. Clint the other clint, clint watts, i want to ask you, im just trying to find the tweet because the president had one tweet and then he deleted it and put another tweet up. But this idea that earlier today the president implied that this bomb thing when he puts things in quotes he tends to be treating it sarcastically, was a distraction from the elections. That plays into the hands of a lot of the right wing has been talking about. This is false flag. The president tied it directly to voter fraud it and turnout. The white house has said they are completely on top of this information. Is it possible Christopher Wray didnt comment on this is the possible the fbi knew about him yesterday and the president didnt . It is possible. You dont know when they exactly briefed him. You wouldnt necessarily wake him up in the middle of the night, you know, in terms of the operation. They might wait until this morning to give him a briefing. So you dont know what that is. I think whats interesting is how were treating the president s language around a lot of these things. When i remember going back ten years ago we were always looking at who are the advocates, who are the people provoking this sort of speech that is closely tied into violence. Weve got to remember with extreme behavior like this i think Jim Cavanaugh said it best, this guy wanted to be heard. You look at his social media posts, his behavior and activity, what he did now, he wanted to be heard. And what better time to do it than in a run up to an election when everybody is primed to this sort of stuff . Look at that van right there. Youve got cross hairs on a former secretary of state and a former first lady. I mean, when we were talking about this in the isis scenario, what is the message we always hear in new york city . If you see something, say something. If we had seen someone carrying around a picture like that was targeting a president or first lady during the terrorism years this would have been immediately called into Law Enforcement or the government. When you look at twitter today there are people around the country that had taken pictures of that man. They knew exactly who this person was down there in florida. Look at how the political dialogue has really lowered the standard for tip offs, this guys social media posts, death to soros, death to socialists. Somehow all the markers are there but we treat it differently. Thats right. The bar has changed. I think were going to have a discussion in the next couple of days. As well as we should. When you see a van driving around the street with people in cross hairs, maybe that should trigger us to do something about it. Up next, much more breaking on todays news. What were learning about bomb suspect ceaser, sayoc, and the more than dozen explosive devices intended for cnn and President Trumps political targets. And in a few moments president obama is expected to speak. Youre watching nbc. Ate to sevee ulcerative colitis, are you okay . Even when i was there, i never knew when my symptoms would keep us apart. So i talked to my doctor about humira. I learned humira can help get, and keep uc under control when other medications havent worked well enough. And it helps people achieve control that lasts. So you can experience few or no symptoms. Humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. Serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened; as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. Before treatment, get tested for tb. 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Treating cancer is more than our mission. Its our passion. Expert medicine works here. Learn more at cancercenter. Com. Cancer Treatment Centers of america. Appointments available now. Lets get you caught up on our big story at this hour. An arrest in connection with the mailing of more than a dozen suspicious packages that contained explosives. The Justice Department officially announced a short time ago that 56yearold caesar sayoc was picked up in plantation, florida. The packages were sent to high profile political figures and media organizations who have been critical of President Trump. The arrest comes as authorities int int intercepted three more packages today. Another addressed to director of intelligence James Clapper. And a package found at a postal facility in california was addressed to senator kamala harris. Fbi director chris wray says dna evidence led authorities to sayoc. Based on their initial analysis they uncovered a latent fingerprint from one of the envelopes containing an ied that had been sent to congresswoman maxine waters. We have confirmed this fingerprint is that of caesar sayoc. There is also a possible dna connection between samples collected of pieces of two different ieds mailed in separate envelopes. Joining me now by phone is former nypd commissioner bill brat. Good to talk to you. Weve spoken a few times in the last couple of days. You and others were remarkably confident whoever was behind these bombs was going to be found. Particularly the nypd and the fbi and the atf and other Police Forces around the country. Youve seen time and again where that close collaboration has paid off. The the bombings several years ago in new york city. The fbi joint Terrorism Task force of the nypd. The intimacy of the investigators, the capabilities they have is extraordinary. I got to be commissioner recently and got to see it firsthand. But the continuing evolution was quite evident this past week, as we saw this case unfold. And there was a treasuretrove of evidentiary material here. There was talk about one of the envelopes he might have slipped up on. And he left a fingerprint on one of the 13 and obtained dna from another. All of this is a time of celebration of american Law Enforcement undermidin the mids this political turmoil and the chaos that seems to sursurround us every day, in the midst of this storm they did what was expected of them. They conducted an investigation, conducted it thoroughly and now the idea will be to move prosecution forward to ensure this character spends the rest of his life behind bars. Whats the lesson here . Every time we have one of these incidents we learn something. Are there things we have learned from this experience already . Well, certainly. Every time you have one of these you learn something in a sense of new techniques to use, new ways to go forward with the investigation. The treasuretrove of social media. We talked earlier in the week about the idea misspellings that may be in the investigation. Weve seen that firsthand the misspellings on the envelopes were echoed in some of his social media postings. Every time one of these occurs and unfortunately there were too many of them and they seem to be occurring more with the frequency we learn from it, and in learning from it you try to use that to prevent the next one from happening. Commissioner thank you for joining us. The suspicious packages were discovered in new york, washington, florida and california. But much of the investigation is focused now on southern florida where the suspect was arrested and where the packages were believed to be mailed from Willard Shepard is an Investigative Reporter with nbc station wtvj in miami. He joins us now in plantation, florida, where the suspect caesar sayoc was arrested this morning. What can you tell us about the suspect and the packages the. Reporter well, this all unfolded, ali, right here right behind me. Actually at this auto zone store about 10 30, 10 35 this morning. Were about 30 miles north of downtown miami and 10 miles west of fort lauderdale. He was tracked to this location, and the authorities really started focusing on this area where there is a central mail facility here in florida, where you cant go and drop off packages from the general public. But the packages that go into mailboxes and other locations are brought to this facility. That facility is about 10 miles south of where i am right now. They knew that a number of those packages had come from that particular facility. And that initially led them to south florida. And then we heard the fbi director talking about getting that fingerprint. And when they got that fingerprint these Law Enforcement agencies that have been in close touch with each other, they actually started the operation of the task force here in south florida with fbi, secret service, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, all the other local Police Agencies, and it turned out that one of these Police Agencies had taken this man into custody. The latest arrest we know about was back in 2015. They were able to match that throughout these databases. And that initially then led them specifically to mr. Sayoc. I spoke to the police department. The Aventura Police department which is here in south florida as well, where this gentleman apparently resides. And when the authorities went to talk to his neighbors in essence, hey, they all said, hey, hes the guy that has this van that has protrump stickers on it and also some other political type of messages on that van. And when they got that word, that really kind of nailed it down, obviously, because of where these packages had been sent. They started to do surveillance and follow him, and this location here in plantation is where they decided make the arrest several hours ago. Pretty incredible stuff. Willard shepard in plantation, florida, for us. Dont take it for granted, its 2018, and this is real Police Investigative expertise in being able to find this guy. Joining us now is malcolm nance and Barbara Mcquade, former u. S. Attorney for the Eastern District of michigan and currently a professor but has experience with bombs and attempted bombs and bomb makers. On one hand, barbara, we rely on the fact that these folks are not always as smart as they think they are. But we actually have that experience with bombers and attempted assassins who are really, really smart. Weve developed some remarkable techniques for finding these people. And politics aside, the last few days has worked as it should have in terms of investigation and honing in on whoever did this. Absolutely. And i think its a really great shining moment for the fbi and all these other laufrmw enforce agencies to see how they Work Together and put together clues. And the work is not done yet. They will continue to do things like get a search warrant for his home, a search warrant for his car where may they find bomb ca components and other thing,s. So if he carries a cellphone thats like a personal gps device. You can find out whether he was in the vicinity of post offices, and get credit card activity to see if he made expenditures at Home Improvement stores and if so get surveillance videos to see if hes at those scenes making those purchases. So im sure theyre continuing to investigate to build the case. I think one other thing we might see, this is currently charged in new york with five counts because this is where five bombs were received but dont forget 13 bombs were mailed from florida. So we might see superseding charges even before new york. Malcolm nance, you and i have been talking about this two days ago, and a notion has been developed out there about this being potentially a false flag operation. A democrat or a democratic sympathizer doing this to make republicans look bad. As nonsensical as that may have been it actually took root in conservative media and the president seemed to fan those flames today suggesting republican turnout was very high until this bomb, and he put it in quotes, this bomb thing happened. Im not hearing a lot from those folks right now who decided to deny the obvious and suggested this was a false flag. Theyre out there in force right now still planting this idea that this was some sort of liberal who wanted to do this. You know, now that weve got the bomber im comfortable with talking about ideology. Terrorists do not grow and become radicalized in a vacuum. There has to be some underlying motivation for this. And if you look at the progression of this persons life, he seemed to be going downhill for a period of time. You know, he had some arrests, he hadfore closure, he was living with his mother. And then it appears he glommed onto something the gave him meaning in his life, and in this case thats following President Trump. And his twitter feed, his facebook feed, you know, the pictures that he puts there shows that, that he really came to see this partisan being as a new way to validate himself. And it appear tuesday have worked. However, with a lot of people who have these mental malfunctions, they tend to go one step too far. And in this case he may perhaps and well find out he may have seen this threatened by other people threatening politically President Trump and this led him to go completely over the edge and decide to attack his political enemies. We see this with middle eastern terrorists, with european terrorists all the time. Terrorists are terrorists. And thats what this man is. He just happens to be an american terrorist. Let me ask you, barbara, the idea that this guy has priors including a bomb threat and that we dont know weve got 13 devices confirmed, there may be a 14th out there. We dont know, by the way, if there are more. Theres a Public Safety interest. I see these guys on tv getting arrested on the tv shows and they call for their lawyer and theyre read their rights. Does that are they going to try and squeeze him for whether there are any more bombs . Well, i think they would be within their legal rights to try to find out whether there are any bombs. In a case that my office prosecuted, my former office, involving the underwear bomber, for example, there were questions asked of him for Public Safety purposes to ask him whether there were other bombs on other planes that were in the air, without giving him miranda warnings and advising him that he had a right to an attorney. And courtss held that was acceptable because of that Public Safety exception. I would think similar in this case they should ask him those questions and likely are and should ask him those questions. How many bombs did you send through the mail . How many more are there . To whom are they addressed to try to center september those. The only down side is you would not be able to use those statements against him down the road. There would be some calculation done about the importance and value of those statements weighed against the importance of the Public Safety in this case. I would think in light of all the other evidence they have against him, that it would be worth while to risk losing such statements and evidence in exchange for guaranteeing the Public Safety, especially people working inside those postal facilities. Thanks very much. Thank you for your support over the last few days as we have covered this very scary few days. Malcolm is the executive director of the terror asymmetrics project. This just in to us. Senator cory booker an intended recipient of one of the explosive devices tweeted moments ago, grateful for Law Enforcements work toably those responsible to justice and for their vigilance to keep americans safe. Cowardly acts of terror will never silence or intimidate americans. They will only strengthen our resolve to stand against fear and hatred. The latest now on the mail bombing suspect, says ar sayoc. The attorney general confirmed he is facing five federal crimes including transporting explosives, threats against former president s and assaulting current and former federal officials. He faces up to 58 years in prison. Im joined by ben collins and danny cevallos. Ben, youve been digging around this guys social media, which looks a lot like that van. Why dont you and i walk over here and take a look at this van that hes been driving. Youve been on social media, so you know that already on social media, people are saying this must be made up. This is a new van or whatever the case is. But youve got Hillary Clintons face here with the crosshairs. Youve got protrump stuff. This is sort of like a look into who this guy is. All that falsified garbage is pretty easily dispelled because theres a time line on his facebook. On his Facebook Page in 2015, theres this white van. Theres none of this stuff on it. Then in 2016, it has this stuff on it. Over the course of time he got by progressioprogression more extremist over time. Ending up with Hillary Clinton in crosshairs. This next to it is a meme of donald trump on a tank thats very prevalent. Ive never seen this, but you say this sort of thing exists . Yes. This is very big on, like, protrump forums, reddits and things like that. Van jones and cnn sucks, things youre seeing there. Thats barack obama by the way. Yeah. You see this on his twitter account too. First of all, malcolm said that there was some tie between the misspellings on his twitter account. Right. And also what was sent on the packages. He spelled hillary wrong. He spelled Debbie Wasserman schultzs name wrong. He also had lets move back here. He was following a couple of Facebook Pages. He was apparently the only follower on a couple of them, but they had very problematic name. Oh, yeah. So this is probably the biggest tipoff you can probably have. He was the only follower of an account called kill george soros. Another one called kill all socialists. So if he didnt make the page, he liked it in some ca pass ipc. On there, its some sort of tarot card version of the world death on there. Its not pretty stuff. It doesnt look particularly sane stuff. Its just its a troubled dude on social media making a lot of threats. Danny, it will be later when we talk about why twitter and reddit and facebook didnt figure this stuff out because someone should be able to be figuring out a kill george soros Facebook Page. More importantly, this all leads into who this guy is. Is that all going to be evidence against him . The stickers on the car, the tweets, the social media postings, they will all come in, and they already have come in if you look at the criminal complaint that has been filed. As a criminal defense attorney, one of the things you find with the advent of social media is that its only assisted Law Enforcement in catching suspects and eventual criminal defendants because if you have any question about a particular defendants intent or purpose, often thats ascertainable from what they publicly posted thats out there forever. Let me tell you what we have just gotten in. Multiple senior Law Enforcement sources say the accused receiverial bomber has been questioned by Law Enforcement under the National Security exception and denied conducting a mail bomb campaign. The National Security exception, i was just talking to Barbara Mcquade about that, allows them to question him without his normal miranda rights. Thats right. There are several different exceptions to both interrogating an individual and conducting searches. We talked earlier about the Public Safety exception. Theres also the exigent circumstances exception to the search warrant. So not only can they question a suspect, they can also go into that persons home or facility if they have probable cause or they believe there are explosives in there. Its frequently used in exactly that situation where there are potentially explosives that will hurt either Law Enforcement or the public at large. So we dont know whether hes cooperating but theyre probably trying to find out, who else did you mail stuff to . What else might be out there . That is the remaining question. Ben collins, you also realized from looking around his social media that by two years ago now, by october of 2016, he was politicized. He apparently attended a trump rally in florida. Yep. The attorney general went out on a limb for this attorney general and said this guy might have been a partisan. Yeah. Theres really no question about it. He was attending trump rallies. He took videos of himself at these trump rallies. He was in these protrump facebook groups. Not all of them were radical. Many of them were pretty normal stuff and he was part of a much larger crowd that was totally completely normal people, right . But, you know, there was tons of radical stuff in there and, again, there were threats on twitter that twitter did nothing about to relatively private citizens about, you should and i hope youre around next week because we are going to be talking about this all week next week. Social media and the degree to which it is complicit in some of these things. Ben, good to see you. Thank you for your reporting. I know youre going to get back in there and get more information. Danny as well, thanks to you. And thanks to everybody who has helped us cover this remarkably important story this last few days. Every so often america, its ideals, and its people are put to the test. This is one of those times. Its hard to believe its only been three days sns we first learned of a serial bomber who decided to put explosive devices in the mail, targeting people who have been critical of the president , exercising their First Amendment obligations. Today one man was arrested. His extreme political views put on display on the van he drove, and all over his social media. Its no secret that we have reached a political fever pitch in america, at times losing sin sight of the fact that it is okay to disagree. But its not okay to advocate Political Violence, tactics meant to spark fear in the hearts and minds of the people. One of the many explosives sent this week made its way into the new york offices of cnn, along with many other news outlets including nbc. We have often been referred to as fake news by this president and by members of his administration and his supporters. In fact, the president used the term fake news at an event this afternoon. Let me be clear. Theres nothing fake about what journalists cover on a day to day basis. Theres nothing fake about what this serial bomber did and nothing fake about his very real beliefs. The American Press institute points out that journalists could practice a, quote, discipline of verification, to find not just the facts, not just the facts, but the truth about the facts. It goes on to say that the purpose of journalism is thus to provide citizens with the information they need to make the best possible decisions about their lives, their communities, their societies, and their governments. Every so often america, its ideals, and its people are put to the test. This is one of those times. For our part as journalists, we will continue to do our jobs and be the bearers of truth. The country has to come together. This division, this hatred, this ugliness, it really has to end, and words matter. Our political opponents, though, are not our enemies. The press is not the enemy of the people. Heres what i hope. I hope that this craziness thats going on about these pipe bombs, i hope and pray that our leaders are going to work to lower the temperature and our public dialogue, and i have faith the vast majority will do that because, folks, were a lot better than this. Hi, everyone. Its 4 00 in new york. The breaking news today, federal Law Enforcement officials arrested a florida man suspected of orchestrating the mail bomb campaign against critics of donald trump. The arrest comes as three additional explosive devices were found. The new targets included senator kamala harris, senator cory booker, and James Clapper, the former director of National Intelligence. The suspect, cesar sayoc, 56, is from aventura florida, just north of miami. Hes a registered republican, and a van covered with protrump stickers was also seized this morning. The president responded to news of the arrest at an event earlier today. These terrorizing acts are despicable and have no place in our country. No place. I have instructed authorities to spare no resource or expense in finding those res