Rep. Beto O'Rourke (Photo: Screen capture)
Pipe bomb suspect Cesar Sayoc sent threatening Facebook messages to Senate candidate Beto O'Rourke — and the FBI sent bomb dogs to search his campaign office in response.
A spokesperson for O'Rourke's campaign told the Dallas Morning News that the candidate received "several" threatening messages from Sayoc earlier in the year.
"No one said 'you are on a list' but there was immediately a presence including agents and dogs who were at the office even as recent as today," O'Rourke campaign spokesperson Chris Evans told the News on Wednesday.
Evans said the campaign first received threatening messages from Sayoc in April of this year and that they immediately turned them over to U.S. Capitol Police. They then reported the messages to the FBI in July.
The Facebook messages Sayoc sent the O'Rourke campaign included photos of the candidate with his wife and children alongside a warning: "hug your loved ones everytime [sic] you leave home."
"See you soon," the message continued.
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Now, A Republic County Sheriff's Office incident report obtained by Raw Story through the Kansas Open Records Act sheds additional light on the situation — one of the latest in a series of thefts from prominent political candidates and political action committees.
The incident report explains how Moran's campaign treasurer, Timothy E. Gottschalk, on Nov. 15 contacted the Republic County Sheriff's Office to report "fraudulent activity" related to the three-term senator's re-election committee.
The sheriff's office sent Deputy Kade Odell to Gottschalk's accounting office in Belleville, Kansas, to meet him.
"Gottschalk stated that they had received emails containing invoices that were found to be fraudulent," Odell wrote in a report. "Before this was discovered, wire transfers were authorized through Astra Bank of Bellevile, Kansas to pay the invoices provided with these fraudulent email."
Odell then sought aid from other agencies.
"I contacted the Kansas Bureau of Investigation requesting assistance on this same date," the deputy wrote. "I was then later advised that it would be referred to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to be investigated by the Kansas City FBI Cyber Crimes Task Force."
Read the full report here:
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