A Canadian woman is scheduled for her first court appearance Tuesday afternoon to face charges that she sent a package containing the deadly substance ricin to the White House.
Pascale Ferrier, of Quebec, was arrested Sunday at the New York-Canada border. She will appear in federal court in Buffalo to face a charge of threatening the president.
FILE: An American flag flies at half-staff over the White House in Washington.
(AP)
The package, postmarked from Canada and addressed to the White House, was sent sometime last week and intercepted at a mail sorting facility on Friday. It included a letter that included disparaging remarks about the president, according to an FBI affidavit filed in the case.
It wasn’t immediately clear if Ferrier had a lawyer who could speak on her behalf.
During the investigation, the FBI discovered that six additional similar letters appeared to have been received in Texas in September and also had stamps indicating that they’d been mailed from Canada, according to court papers.
Those letters “contained similar language” to the letter that was sent to Trump and were sent to people affiliated with facilities where Ferrier had been jailed in 2019.
Investigators also matched Ferrier’s fingerprints from four of the letters, the complaint said. In Facebook and Twitter posts in September, Ferrier also wrote threatening messages against the president and used similar wording as she did in the letter, according to the document.
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When she was arrested Sunday while trying to enter a border crossing in Buffalo, Ferrier told Customs and Border Patrol agents that she was “wanted by the FBI for the ricin letters,” the complaint said. Officers found a loaded gun in her waistband and said she was also carrying a knife.
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Ferrier was booked into the Hidalgo County jail in March of 2019 on two charges of unlawfully carrying a weapon and one charge of tampering with government records, according to online jail records. Ferrier is listed as living in Quebec and was released in May of last year. The records state the charges against her were ordered dismissed.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.