The headquarters of Arizona GOP Senate candidate Kari Lake was placed under lockdown Tuesday after a campaign staffer opened a box containing a “suspicious” item.
A campaign official told Fox News Digital that an intern at the campaign’s Phoenix office opened a letter containing a suspicious substance and a note reading, “Caution anthrax.
“The campaign called authorities, prompting a response from multiple law enforcement agencies and a hazmat team. Officers and firefighters cleared the building and sent in a team to investigate the substance,” Fox News reported.
The Phoenix Police Department stated that the drug was analyzed and deemed “non-hazardous.”
“There were no immediate threats to the community and the occupants of the building will be allowed access shortly. Investigators have been assigned,” Phoenix police told Fox News in a statement.
“The radical left, with help from the mainstream media, has escalated its attacks against me from baseless smears and legal harassment to physical threats. Today, my office received a suspicious envelope, potentially containing anthrax—an attempt to intimidate and silence me. This isn’t just about me; it’s an attack on our movement. I won’t be intimidated, and those responsible must be brought to justice. I want to thank all the first responders and the hazmat team for their swift and professional response. The time to unite against these dangerous, un-American tactics is now,” Lake wrote in an X post.
Lake’s Democratic opponent, Ruben Gallego wrote on X: “I condemn any act of violence of threats against Kari Lake, her office, or other public officials.”
“My thoughts are with the staffer involved, and I’m grateful for the swift response by @PhoenixPolice, @PHXFire, and the hazmat team,” he said. “I hope everything is resolved safely and quickly.
Kari Lake’s Senate campaign took an unexpected turn today following a bombshell court ruling that revealed sealed divorce records from her opponent’s past.
Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), who filed for divorce from his then-wife, Kate Gallego, in 2016, lost a protracted legal battle to keep the case private. The Washington Free Beacon prevailed in a 10-month court fight, culminating in the Arizona Supreme Court’s rejection of Gallego’s final appeal to keep the documents sealed.
Gallego filed a memorandum to the court that year stating that Kate Gallego “had not yet been served” with divorce papers and “her attorney entered an appearance” hadn’t yet occurred in the case, noting that she was “likely to give birth any day,” according to The Washington Free Beacon. The divorce petition said that the “parties’ marriage is irretrievably broken” and saw “no reasonable prospect of reconciliation.”
That said, it appears that Kate Gallego was caught off-guard by the filing. In a February 2017 response to his divorce filing, she said she was “without knowledge of information sufficient to form a belief” that the marriage wasn’t fixable and thus refuted her then-husband’s claim,
In short, Ruben Gallego’s wife, then a Phoenix city councilwoman, was extremely pregnant when she was served with divorce papers she had no idea were coming, the Free Beacon noted.
According to the Free Beacon, the court documents also indicate that the congressman was attempting to saddle his wife with court costs under an Arizona law that allows courts to grant such fees. Kate Gallego, in her February 2017 filing, requested the court to “enter an order that husband contribute to wife’s attorney’s fees and costs.”
In his initial request to the court, Ruben Gallego aimed to block any claims to “long-term spousal maintenance” from Kate, urging the judge to rule that “neither party is in need of nor entitled to an award of long term spousal maintenance.”
She initially claimed that she was “entitled to spousal maintenance,” but she later dropped it and agreed that both of them were financially independent and not in need of any assistance. The divorce was finalized in April 2017.
