The White House is reportedly the subject of a Secret Service investigation after initial tests of a white powder found inside the building on Sunday, which led to a brief evacuation, showed it to be cocaine.
Two officers who were familiar with the situation and dispatch from the DC fire crew that responded to the incident were able to identify the powder as cocaine.
Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said the substance is undergoing additional testing to determine what it is and that investigators are probing how it got into the White House. He stressed that the D.C. Fire Department had evaluated the safety of the substance.
“The discovery prompted a security alert to be raised and the executive mansion to be temporarily evacuated,” Guglielmi said.
Meanwhile, President Biden was reportedly not at the White House at the time. Guglielmi claimed that the “investigation into the cause and manner” of the substance entering the White House is still ongoing.
Guglielmi declined to elaborate on the exact location of the substance or its packaging inside the White House.
However, he claimed that members of the Secret Service’s uniformed division discovered it while making routine rounds through the structure.
A firefighter from the DC Department’s hazardous materials team radioed the test results at 8:49 p.m., saying, “We have a yellow strip that says Cocaine Hydrochloride.”
Brief broadcasts are recorded on openmhz.com, a website that allows users to listen to live and archived radio broadcasts from police and fire departments.
The Washington Post reported that the 8:49 broadcast was from a White House call Sunday night, according to a representative of the investigation who requested anonymity to discuss the ongoing matter. The officer said there was not much substance.
According to spokesman Vito Maggiolo, the DC Fire Department would say only that they “supported the US Secret Service as they conducted the investigation.”
As the discovery was made after Hunter Biden, the son of US President Joe Biden, recently filmed himself smoking while driving after he was reported to have been smoking, this raised questions about his involvement in the incident. Suspicion arises.
