The U.S. Secret Service has stopped looking for the owner of a dime bag of cocaine left behind in the White House over the July 4th weekend, closing its investigation because of a lack of physical evidence.
The cocaine was found on July 2 in a vestibule off the lobby of a lower-level West Wing entrance, stashed in a cubbyhole near the Situation Room, where officials store cellphones during meetings.
President Biden and his family were away at Camp David at the time. The West Wing is often frequented by visitors on staff-led tours on evenings and weekends. The Situation Room itself is being renovated, and has not been used for months.
The FBI tested the bag for fingerprints and DNA. There wasn't enough of either on the bag to draw any conclusions, the Secret Service said in a statement.
Agents had gathered the names of several hundred people who may have passed by that area. But there was no surveillance video footage that provided leads.
"Without physical evidence, the investigation will not be able to single out a person of interest from the hundreds of individuals who passed through the vestibule where the cocaine was discovered," the Secret Service said.
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
