Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simson is being updated on possible threats to elections officials.
Simon is among more than twenty other secretaries of state to receive notes from a group calling itself the United States Traitor Elimination Army.
"The Department of Justice and the FBI are vigorously pursuing whoever sent this," Simon explained to WCCO-TV. "We just had some indirect contact with them on Friday. So there's an ongoing investigation."
Simon explained that when the letter came to his office last month, his office was evacuated. Postal inspectors and FBI agents swept the area and found nothing and the substance found turned out to be harmless.
Simon also explained there was a brief meeting last Friday.
"Just that there's an ongoing investigation and they asked about certain things that they could look at. That's probably all I should say," he said.
Across the country, local election directors are beefing up their security in advance of Election Day on Nov. 5 to keep their workers and polling places safe while also ensuring that ballots and voting procedures won’t be tampered with.
Their concern isn’t just theoretical. Election offices and those who run them have been targets of harassment and even death threats since the 2020 presidential election, primarily by people acting on former President Donald Trump’s lies that the election was stolen from him through widespread fraud or rigged voting machines.
The focus on security comes as threats of political violence have been on the rise. Trump has been the target of an assassination attempt. Federal agents last year fatally shot a Trump supporter who threatened to assassinate President Joe Biden, and the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was severely injured in a hammer attack by a man promoting right-wing conspiracy theories.