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Bomb threat reported at office of N.H. representative who told military members to disobey illegal orders

The threat came after President Donald Trump suggested Rep. Maggie Goodlander and five other Democrats be executed for sedition.

Rep. Maggie Goodlander at a campaign event in Manchester. Suzanne Kreiter/The Boston Globe

Police in Concord, New Hampshire investigated a potential bomb threat Friday at the office of Rep. Maggie Goodlander, after President Donald Trump suggested she be executed for sedition for calling on U.S. military members to defy “illegal orders.”

The New Hampshire State Police Bomb Squad closed North Main Street between Pleasant and School streets Friday around 3:54 p.m. after the Concord police received “information of a potential threat” toward 18 North Main Street, the local department said. Goodlander’s Concord office is on the fourth floor.

Police searched the area and the building, and the threat was “dispelled” and the area reopened, Concord police said. Minutes before, police received reports of “several hazardous items wired together” in a wooded area near Integra Drive. The bomb squad determined that area safe, according to the police department.

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The investigation is ongoing and active, Concord police said.

“The president of the United States, our commander in chief, is the most powerful person in the world,” Goodlander told CNN. “When he says something, people listen, and his words have real-world consequences for real people.”

Goodlander, a first-term Democrat and former Navy intelligence officer, joined veterans Sen. Elissa Slotkin, Sen. Mark Kelly, and Reps. Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, and Chrissy Houlahan “to speak directly to members of the Military and the Intelligence Community.”

“You can refuse illegal orders,” Kelly and Slotkin both said in the video.

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Trump reposted to social media an article about the video, adding his own commentary that it was “really bad, and Dangerous to our Country.”

“SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS!!!” Trump wrote on Thursday. “LOCK THEM UP???” He called for the lawmakers’ arrest and trial, adding in a separate post that it was “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH.” Trump also reposted more than a dozen comments from other accounts criticizing Democrats, including one that stated “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD !!”

After the bomb threat, Goodlander thanked first responders and confirmed to CNN there “is no current credible threat” to her office. She emphasized that the video simply restates the law.

“We have a president and a secretary of defense who have pushed us across legal boundaries that we’ve never seen before. Reiterating a basic commitment to this Constitution, to federal law, this is our job as lawmakers,” Goodlander said. 

In a joint statement, the lawmakers reiterated their message for service members to “defend the Constitution.”

“What’s most telling is that the President considers it punishable by death for us to restate the law,” the statement said. “Every American must unite and condemn the President’s calls for our  murder and political violence. This is a time for moral clarity.”

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Molly Farrar is a general assignment reporter for Boston.com, focusing on education, politics, crime, and more.

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