That concludes our live updates on this story for now, thanks for reading. But here is our news article on this topic. The Guardian will continue to update that and follow major developments closely, around the clock.
Waters says we must “never stop the fight for justice and equality in this country” and, while warning everyone to be alert and careful, she ends on a defiant note, saying: “As the young people say ‘I ain’t scared’.”
Maxine Waters then follows her devastating accusations with this remark: “I think it’s the worst thing that has ever happened to us, to have a president of this nature.”
Maxine Waters’s video statement continued, with no holds barred and harking back to the incredibly contentious confirmation process of supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh last month: “When Kavanaugh was being considered for confirmation and we [Democrats] were opposing him, he turned it into ‘they are the mob, a Democrat mob’.”
She said: “But he is expert at that, he is good at lying, at deceiving, and of course, encouraging people in his own way to be violent, or to be racist, or to be separatist.”
Now that the press conference has wrapped up, we will wrap up the rest of the remarks of Maxine Waters from her video statement earlier today, in which she excoriates Donald Trump.
She continued on the point about Trump rallying the crowd in Missoula, Montana, last week behind the violent assault on the Guardian’s journalist Ben Jacobs by then-congressional candidate, now congressman, Greg Gianforte of Montana. “He mimicked and mocked the slamming of that journalist,” she said.
Then added, of the president: “He does a lot to promote violence, now he is trying to turn it on us.”
Law enforcement officials in these press conferences try not to give away too much, but here’s some telling points from New York Police Department commissioner James O’Neill.
He makes a point of saying that investigators do not believe the bombs are hoaxes.
He expresses high praise for all the law enforcement bodies involved in the investigation.
And, without any prompting, he praises the media for showing images of the suspect packages, which prompted the retired detective to call the emergency services in the pre-dawn hours this morning because the pictures he was seeing on his TV resembled a package he had intercepted on its way to De Niro.
“I would like to thank him for doing his job correctly,” O’Neill says and, then, directed at the gathered members of the press - aka the mainstream media - he notes: “Thank you for getting it [the images] out there.”
The word Trump is never mentioned. But the president has made great sport over mocking the federal intelligence agencies and the media.
NYPD’s O’Neill, responding to press questions: “I’m not going to get into intent”, when asked what he thinks is the motivation of the perpetrator(s) of this campaign.
He describes the package found on Thursday as a “suspected explosive device”.
But emphasizes: “We are not treating these as hoax devices.”
Bill de Blasio is up now, saying: “This is absolutely terrorism. Using violence to make a political impact.” But he adds, in characteristic upbeat tone adopted by civic leaders in times of tension such as these: “The people in New York City are as tough as it gets.”
This press conference is taking a typical course. Tiny fragments of new information and a lot of question dodging, as an investigation of this kind proceeds with extreme caution in terms of what the public is told.
