By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A woman was sentenced to about 22 years in prison on Thursday for sending threatening letters, containing homemade ricin, in September 2020, to then-President Donald Trump at the White House, the U.S. Justice Department said in a statement.
Pascale Cecile Veronique Ferrier, 55, a dual citizen of Canada and France, pleaded guilty earlier this year. She sent the ricin-filled letters to Trump and eight Texas State law enforcement officials, according to the Justice Department.
The envelope addressed to Trump was intercepted in September 2020 at the White House mail sorting facility in Washington, where U.S. Postal Service personnel flagged it as suspicious and contacted the FBI, according to an FBI affidavit filed then with the charging documents.
Ferrier was arrested two days later on the Canada-U.S. border between Buffalo and Fort Erie, Ontario.
She admitted that she had made ricin at her residence in Quebec, Canada, in September 2020, prosecutors said. Ricin is a deadly poison made from castor beans.
Her sentence of 262 months in prison will be followed by a lifetime of supervised release, the Justice Department said on Thursday.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh; Editing by Sandra Maler)