Comment by rpdillon

This is exactly right. Another note: they tried to time the announcement with Trump's speech - the actual devices were found weeks ago. The NYT article mentions August in the same sentence it mentions the 35 miles.

The cherry on top is that at the end of the article, they sort of let it slip that this isn't something that they expect would be unusual:

> “This is an ongoing investigation, but there’s absolutely no reason to believe we won’t find more of these devices in other cities,” Mr. McCool said.