Local

FBI investigates ‘suspicious’ envelope mailed to HRC building

Threatening letter with powder sent to gun control advocate working for HRC tenant

Published

13 years ago

May 28, 2013

Lou Chibbaro Jr.

Mark Glaze received a threatening letter at his office located in the HRC building.

D.C. police, Fire Department investigators and FBI agents rushed to the Human Rights Campaign headquarters in downtown Washington shortly after 5 p.m. on Memorial Day to investigate a threatening letter containing a suspicious powdery substance, according to police and a Fire Department spokesperson.

Fire Department investigators determined from tests that the substance found on the letter was not hazardous and posed no threat to those who may have come into contact with it, said Fire Department spokesperson Lon Walls.

The letter, which had no return address or name on it, was mailed to nationally recognized gun control advocate Mark Glaze, who had been working for the Raben Group, a lobbying and political consulting firm that rents space in the HRC building, a police report and people familiar with the incident said.

Although Robert Raben, founder and owner of the Raben Group, and Glaze are gay, the threatening letter addressed the subject of gun control and had nothing to do with LGBT rights, said Erika Soto Lamb, communications director for Mayors Against Illegal Guns, for which Glaze serves as director.

Glaze reported that “he arrived [at] his office and retrieved his mail and then went outside into the park area to open his mail,” the police report says. “One of the envelopes opened by [Glaze] contained a threatening message which had a whitish orange substance on the note,” the police report says.

Glaze “left the envelope on the park bench, which was located on the side of the building. The letter was addressed to Complainant 1 [Glaze] but there was no return address or sender’s name,” the report says.

Glaze then called police, triggering the arrival of police and Fire Department members.

“I’ll be working with the FBI and MPD to learn more,” Raben told the Blade in a statement. “I’m grateful no one is physically injured, and sad that hard working professionals have to be concerned about this, but regrettably we do,” he said.

A witness at the scene sent a text message to a friend reporting that police blocked the street near the intersection of 17th Street and Rhode Island Avenue, N.W., where the HRC building is located, shortly after Fire Department and police vehicles arrived on the scene.

The witness also reported that police put yellow crime scene tape around the HRC building as law enforcement officials conferred among each other.

Walls of the Fire Department said the FBI routinely joins D.C. police to investigate incidents in which threatening communications are sent, including those sent with a powdery substance. He said the substance almost always turns out to be harmless.

“We get about two or three of these calls each day, mostly on work days,” he said. “But we always test it and investigate. We take this very seriously.”

The threatening note sent to Glaze at the HRC building came just over a year after a bomb threat prompted D.C. police to evacuate the HRC building and another D.C. office building in which other national LGBT organizations are located.

For unknown reasons, an unidentified person telephoned the bomb threat to police in Los Angeles, saying a bomb had been placed in the “LGBT building” in Washington, Los Angeles police reported.

As a precaution, D.C. police, when contacted by the LAPD, ordered the evacuation of at least two buildings known to be home to as many as 11 national LGBT organizations – the HRC building and a nearby building on Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.

The latter building is home to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the National Center for Transgender Equality, and other national LGBT groups.

Both Raben and Glaze have worked on LGBT-related issues and national politics for many years. Raben, an attorney, served as a legislative assistant to gay former U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.). Raben later served as an assistant U.S. Attorney General during the Clinton administration before founding the Raben Group in 2001.

Glaze, 42, has worked on a number of issues for Raben Group clients, including campaign finance reform, government ethics, and LGBT-related issues.

Under the auspices of the Raben Group, Glaze recently became a highly visible figure in advocating for federal gun control legislation in his role as director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, of which more than 950 U.S. mayors are members.

The Washington Blade reported on Glaze’s gun control activities in a profile on him in January, noting that he had been widely featured in mainstream news media outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Politico and the Associated Press as well as in TV news programs.

Lamb, spokesperson for the mayor’s group, said Glaze recently decided to leave the Raben Group to become a full-time staff member of Mayors Against Illegal Guns. She noted that Glaze coincidently had been packing his personal items and moving out of the Raben Group offices at the HRC building at the time the threatening letter arrived.

Glaze “stated…that he was at the location cleaning out his office and is no longer an employee at this location,” the police report says.

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Virginia

Gay Va. State Sen. Ebbin resigns for role in Spanberger administration

Veteran lawmaker will step down in February

Published

1 day ago

January 8, 2026

Lou Chibbaro Jr.

Virginia State Sen. Adam Ebbin will step down effective Feb. 18. (Washington Blade file photo by Michael K. Lavers)

Alexandria Democrat Adam Ebbin, who has served as an openly gay member of the Virginia Legislature since 2004, announced on Jan. 7 that he is resigning from his seat in the State Senate to take a job in the administration of Gov.-Elect Abigail Spanberger.

Since 2012, Ebbin has been a member of the Virginia Senate for the 39^th District representing parts of Alexandria, Arlington, and Fairfax counties. He served in the Virginia House of Delegates representing Alexandria from 2004 to 2012, becoming the state’s first out gay lawmaker.

His announcement says he submitted his resignation from his Senate position effective Feb. 18 to join the Spanberger administration as a senior adviser at the Virginia Cannabis Control Authority.

“I’m grateful to have the benefit of Senator Ebbin’s policy expertise continuing to serve the people of Virginia, and I look forward to working with him to prioritize public safety and public health,” Spanberger said in Ebbin’s announcement statement.

She was referring to the lead role Ebbin has played in the Virginia Legislature’s approval in 2020 of legislation decriminalizing marijuana and the subsequent approval in 2021of a bill legalizing recreational use and possession of marijuana for adults 21 years of age and older. But the Virginia Legislature has yet to pass legislation facilitating the retail sale of marijuana for recreational use and limits sales to purchases at licensed medical marijuana dispensaries.

“I share Governor-elect Spanberger’s goal that adults 21 and over who choose to use cannabis, and those who use it for medical treatment, have access to a well-tested, accurately labeled product, free from contamination,” Ebbin said in his statement. “2026 is the year we will move cannabis sales off the street corner and behind the age-verified counter,” he said.

Maryland

Steny Hoyer, the longest-serving House Democrat, to retire from Congress

Md. congressman served for years in party leadership

Published

1 day ago

January 8, 2026

Baltimore Banner

At 86, Steny Hoyer is the latest in a generation of senior-most leaders stepping aside, making way for a new era of lawmakers eager to take on governing. (Photo by KT Kanazawich for the Baltimore Banner)

By ASSOCIATED PRESS and LISA MASCARO | Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the longest-serving Democrat in Congress and once a rival to become House speaker, will announce Thursday he is set to retire at the end of his term.

Hoyer, who served for years in party leadership and helped steer Democrats through some of their most significant legislative victories, is set to deliver a House floor speech about his decision, according to a person familiar with the situation and granted anonymity to discuss it.

“Tune in,” Hoyer said on social media. He confirmed his retirement plans in an interview with the Washington Post.

The rest of this article can be found on the Baltimore Banner’s website.

District of Columbia

Kennedy Center renaming triggers backlash

Artists who cancel shows threatened; calls for funding boycott grow

Published

2 days ago

January 7, 2026

Lou Chibbaro Jr.

Richard Grenell, president of the Kennedy Center, threatened to sue a performer who canceled a holiday show. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

Efforts to rename the Kennedy Center to add President Trump’s name to the D.C. arts institution continue to spark backlash.

A new petition from Qommittee , a national network of drag artists and allies led by survivors of hate crimes, calls on Kennedy Center donors to suspend funding to the center until “artistic independence is restored, and to redirect support to banned or censored artists.”

“While Trump won’t back down, the donors who contribute nearly $100 million annually to the Kennedy Center can afford to take a stand,” the petition reads. “Money talks. When donors fund censorship, they don’t just harm one institution – they tell marginalized communities their stories don’t deserve to be told.”

The petition can be found here.

Meanwhile, a decision by several prominent musicians and jazz performers to cancel their shows at the recently renamed Trump-Kennedy Center in D.C. planned for Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve has drawn the ire of the Center’s president, Richard Grenell.

Grenell, a gay supporter of President Donald Trump who served as U.S. ambassador to Germany during Trump’s first term as president, was named Kennedy Center president last year by its board of directors that had been appointed by Trump.

Last month the board voted to change the official name of the center from the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center For The Performing Arts to the Donald J. Trump And The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center For The Performing Arts. The revised name has been installed on the outside wall of the center’s building but is not official because any name change would require congressional action.

According to a report by the New York Times, Grenell informed jazz musician Chuck Redd, who cancelled a 2025 Christmas Eve concert that he has hosted at the Kennedy Center for nearly 20 years in response to the name change, that Grenell planned to arrange for the center to file a lawsuit against him for the cancellation.

“Your decision to withdraw at the last moment — explicitly in response to the Center’s recent renaming, which honors President Trump’s extraordinary efforts to save this national treasure — is classic intolerance and very costly to a non-profit arts institution,” the Times quoted Grenell as saying in a letter to Redd.

“This is your official notice that we will seek $1 million in damages from you for this political stunt,” the Times quoted Grenell’s letter as saying.

A spokesperson for the Trump-Kennedy Center did not immediately respond to an inquiry from the Washington Blade asking if the center still planned to file that lawsuit and whether it planned to file suits against some of the other musicians who recently cancelled their performances following the name change.

In a follow-up story published on Dec. 29, the New York Times reported that a prominent jazz ensemble and a New York dance company had canceled performances scheduled to take place on New Year’s Eve at the Kennedy Center.

The Times reported the jazz ensemble called The Cookers did not give a reason for the cancellation in a statement it released, but its drummer, Billy Hart, told the Times the center’s name change “evidently” played a role in the decision to cancel the performance.

Grenell released a statement on Dec. 29 calling these and other performers who cancelled their shows “far left political activists” who he said had been booked by the Kennedy Center’s previous leadership.

“Boycotting the arts to show you support the arts is a form of derangement syndrome,” the Times quoted him as saying in his statement.