A high-profile Republican politician has been sent a bloodied pig foot with an allegedly antisemitic note attached.

The package was sent to the Capitol Hill office of New York representative Peter King, a polarising figure in the US for his role chairing last month’s congressional hearings on radical Islam. It was discovered on Monday by security before it reached the congressman.

According to the Associated Press, the note with the severed foot included “several antisemitic references”.

Police said they were working with postal staff to investigate where the package came from.

Mr King, who is Catholic, said during the hearings that he had been getting “a lot of hostile phone calls now”, although he said most of the threats had come from abroad.