An unknown substance found in the White House library on Sunday evening tested positive for cocaine, according to a Washington DC Fire Department dispatch call.
The White House was briefly evacuated on Sunday night after the Secret Service found what it described to The Epoch Times only as an “unknown item.”
“On Sunday evening, the White House complex went into a precautionary closure as officers from the Secret Service Uniformed Division investigated an unknown item found inside a work area,” Anthony Guglielmi, Chief of Communications, U.S. Secret Service, told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.
The discovery of the mysterious substance in the West Wing prompted the dispatch of a Hazmat team as well as the DC Fire Department and EMS.
“The DC Fire Department was called to evaluate and quickly determined the item to be non-hazardous,” Guglielmi added, noting that the item was sent out for further evaluation and an investigation into how it entered the White House is pending.
While the Secret Service did not identify the nature of the substance, a DC firefighter said in a radio dispatch call at 8:49 p.m. on July 2 that the substance had tested positive for cocaine.
“We have a yellow bar stating cocaine hydrochloride,” the firefighter can be heard saying on the call.
“Bag it up and take it out,” the firefighter added, presumably addressing someone on the Hazmat team.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Drugs in The White House
While it’s unclear how the cocaine got into the White House, it isn’t the first time that illicit drugs have made their way onto the premises.
Rapper Snoop Dogg told comedian Jimmy Kimmel in 2014 that he smoked marijuana in a White House bathroom.
By Tom Ozimek
