For two election cycles, someone mailed envelopes of white powder to the people who run America's elections. Secretary of state offices were evacuated, and hazmat teams suited up. Election workers in more than 15 states opened their mail wondering if it was anthrax.
It was yeast and flour.
The FBI says the man who sent it is Robin Patrick Martin of Oklahoma City. Agents arrested him early Monday, a day before the midterms. Investigators have tied more than 700 mailings to him. He's charged with conveying a hoax and mailing threatening communications, and he was due in federal court in Oklahoma City on Election Day.
He made the letters hard to miss. They went to election offices, members of Congress, pollsters, news outlets, and federal law enforcement. The return address read "U.S.T.E.A., United States Traitor Elimination Army, Takoma Park, MD." The message warned recipients that arrests for treason were coming, "or worse!!" Some of the 2024 letters ran three pages, declaring war, with extra writing that only showed up under ultraviolet light.
Capitol Police intercepted one bound for Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester's office in Delaware. Postal inspectors caught others headed for Sen. Alex Padilla of California and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York. In 2024, offices from Arizona to Wisconsin were cleared out while crews tested the powder.
The 2024 wave was never solved. The letters kept arriving this fall. On October 23, federal authorities warned recipients to treat the mail as "potentially hazardous."
Then Martin addressed an envelope to the director of the FBI.
According to investigators, he wrote out Patel's full first name and misspelled it "Kashyap." Agents pulled his fingerprints off that letter. They also have video of his car pulling up to mailboxes at post offices in Oklahoma City, Dallas, and San Antonio in October.
The FBI says he posted under a fake name in October too. As "George Livingston," he allegedly wrote to an email list for the Democratic Socialists of America, telling members they were traitors who could be arrested for treason if they voted on November 3. DSA apparently helped investigators track him down.
It took five agencies to close the case: the FBI's Oklahoma City field office and its Criminal Division, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the U.S. Capitol Police, and Oklahoma City police.
No one was poisoned, but the hoax still did damage. Each fake letter shut down an office, pulled a hazmat crew off other calls, and kept election workers from their jobs during the busiest weeks of the year. Some of those workers were counting ballots, and they had to wonder whether their own mail would kill them.
After an envelope hit her office in 2024, Wisconsin's top election official, Meagan Wolfe, said: "Let this be very clear. This incident will not shake us."
Two years later, the FBI has the man it says sent those letters. He's in federal custody in Oklahoma City.
