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