The mystery surrounding the raid at Oakland, California, Mayor Sheng Thao’s home has continued to grow, including the role the U.S. Postal Inspection Service had in it.
While the Postal Inspection Service has remained quiet on why it carried out the raid in concert with the FBI, others close to the investigation are speaking up.
The United States Postal Service’s inspection division investigates crimes using the nation’s mail system. The postal inspectors are federal law enforcement officers who carry firearms, make arrests, executive federal search warrants, and serve subpoenas. There are more than 1,200 inspectors that are tasked with enforcing 200 federal laws involving crimes in connection with the country’s postal system.
In Thao’s case, the USPS is purportedly owed tens of thousands of dollars after delivering campaign mailers that aimed to benefit Thao when she was running for mayor in 2022.
Samari Johnson, owner of Butterfly Direct Marketing, a direct mailing agency in Oakland, said the company received an order to print 170,000 attack mailers targeting Thao’s mayoral rivals Ignacio De La Fuente and Loren Taylor.