Gov. Mike DeWine’s (R-OH) office declined to specify which foreign adversary was responsible for a majority of more than 30 bomb threats that have targeted schools in the Springfield area.
A deluge of contradicting reports in recent weeks about the state’s Haitian immigrant influx and allegations that those migrants have kidnapped, killed, and eaten people’s pets have provided U.S. adversaries a subject they could exploit, DeWine’s press secretary Dan Tierney told the Washington Examiner.
Thirty-three bomb threats were called in on Monday, Tierney said, with an additional one called in on Tuesday.
“Many of these threats are coming in from overseas, made by those who want to fuel the current discord surrounding Springfield. We cannot let the bad guys win,” DeWine said on Monday. “We must take every threat seriously, but children deserve to be in school, and parents deserve to know that their kids are safe. The added security will help ease some of the fears caused by these hoaxes.”
Tierney declined to specify which country DeWine accused of being responsible for the attack but said they believe the “vast majority” of the threats that came from overseas were from the same country.
“The people who are doing this are doing this to sow discord in our community,” Andy Wilson, director of the Ohio Department of Public Safety, said. “We just can’t let them do that. We can’t let them do that. We have to keep providing the services that the citizens of Springfield and Clark County expect.”
U.S. election security officials have warned that both Iran and Russia are looking to interfere in the U.S. elections, in part by exploiting divides in domestic discourse.
“Iran seeks to stoke discord and undermine confidence in our democratic institutions. Iran has furthermore demonstrated a longstanding interest in exploiting societal tensions through various means, including through the use of cyber operations to attempt to gain access to sensitive information related to U.S. elections,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, FBI, and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said in a statement last month.
Iranian hackers recently attempted to hack former President Donald Trump’s campaign to leak internal documents.
In June, an official with the ODNI told reporters that they “consider Russia to be our primary threat for this election,” though the individual described Iran as a “chaos agent.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Trump, for his part, elevated the unfound allegations that Haitian migrants in Ohio were kidnapping and eating people’s pets during last week’s presidential debate.
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there,” Trump said during the debate.