Investigators from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation have been interviewing lawmakers in recent days about the envelopes they received last summer laced with white powder.
Several lawmakers said they have been interviewed by the KBI where they were asked largely about the circumstances related to the envelopes they received with powder.
The questions were largely characterized as routine, including whether they received any follow-up suspicious mail.
Lawmakers said they were interviewed in their statehouse offices.
Several sources speaking anonymously to be candid said they were led to believe the information was requested by the FBI and that the case might be solved soon.
A spokesperson for the KBI confirmed the interviews and said they were related to the white-powdered envelope case.
Melissa Underwood said the interviews included follow-up questions to legislators who received or handled the letters.
At the time the incidents occurred, the focus was on the safety of the legislators, as well as carefully retrieving the evidence, she said in an email.
“Since a variety of agencies were involved – KBI, FBI, local law enforcement, hazmat teams, bomb squads etc. – fully interviewing everyone at that time wasn’t practical,” Underwood said.
She said the interviews were done at the Capitol since there were a large number of victims and witnesses to question who live throughout Kansas.
It was the first news to surface about the white-powdered envelopes since the case dominated local headlines last June and later took on national relevance.
The director of the KBI has said he was confident that the law enforcement would find the culprits who sent Kansas lawmakers mail filled with a white powdery substance.
Tony Mattivi said last year that there were plenty of tracks left behind that left him optimistic that the case would eventually be solved.
“The person or people who did this have left behind a lot of clues – what was written, how it was written, how it was printed, where it was mailed, when it was mailed, how it was mailed ” Mattivi said at the time.
“All of those are very valuable clues,” he said. “I am very optimistic that we’re going to apprehend the person or people responsible for it.”
He said the response to the letters in Kansas was unprecedented, so much so that it compromised a fentanyl investigation.
“Every single bomb squad in the state, every single hazmat unit in the state and countless numbers of our state, local and federal partners were engaged,” he said.
The scenario was not unique to Kansas.
Since last summer, the FBI has been investigating mailed envelopes containing white powder and threatening notes sent to more than 120 Republican state lawmakers in Kansas, Tennessee and Montana.
At one point, a legislative office building in Nashville was closed temporarily after multiple Republican leaders received a white powdery substance in the mail.
Similar letters were sent to four legislators in Montana, including the House speaker’s post office box at the state Capitol as well as to the House speaker pro tem and two other another lawmakers.
NBC Montana reported that the letters had local return addresses but had Kansas City post office markings.
