A female foreign national has been sentenced to 21 years in prison over her failed attempt to poison former President Donald Trump and several Texas public officials with threatening letters containing homemade ricin toxins.
BREAKING: A Canadian woman, Pascale Ferrier, 56, has just been sentenced to 22 years in the US for sending a ricin-laced letter to @realDonaldTrump in 2020. After pleading guilty to biological weapons charges in January, the letter targeting Trump was intercepted before reaching… pic.twitter.com/bQOZaFp4Ie
— Simon Ateba (@simonateba) August 17, 2023
Pascale Cecile Veronique Ferrier, a dual citizen of Canada and France, was sentenced on Thursday in two separate criminal cases in Washington, D.C., and the Southern District of Texas. According to the Department of Justice (DOJ), she received a sentence of 262 months in prison followed by a lifetime of supervised release after she pleaded guilty earlier this year to charges concerning biological weapons.
“Ferrier admitted that she made ricin at her residence in Quebec, Canada, in September 2020. Ricin is a deadly poison made from castor beans,” court documents stated. “Ferrier placed the ricin toxin in envelopes containing letters she wrote to then-President Trump at the White House and to eight Texas State law enforcement officials.”
The 55-year-old woman appeared at her hearing on Thursday in an orange prison jumpsuit — where she claimed while addressing the court that she was a “peaceful person,” while expressing no remorse over her actions.
“I consider myself to be an activist, not a terrorist,” Ferrier claimed, according to CNN. “Activists are constructive; terrorists are destructive.”
“The only regret I have is that it didn’t work and that I couldn’t stop Trump,” she added.
This was not the first time that she made unhinged threats against Trump, as she previously made a post on X — formerly known as Twitter — back in 2020 advocating for someone to “please shoot [T]rump in the face.”
The DOJ explained the details of Ferrier’s threatening letters in their press release.
“The letters in the envelopes contained threatening language, and the letter addressed to then-President Trump instructed him to ‘[g]ive up and remove [his] application for this election,’” the press release read. “Ferrier mailed each of the threatening ricin letters from Canada to the United States.”
CNN reportedly obtained the text of the letter, which read: “You ruin USA and lead them to disaster. I have U.S. cousins, then I don’t want the next 4 years with you as President. Give up and remove your application for this election!”
Ferrier was identified by the FBI because the letter, which she referred to as “a special gift,” contained traces of her fingerprints.
“If it doesn’t work, I’ll find better recipe for another poison, or I might use my gun when I’ll be able to come,” the letter read.
She was arrested soon after mailing the letters — as border patrol officials stopped her at the Peace Bridge Border Crossing in Buffalo, New York, on September 20, 2020, and found her to be in possession of a loaded firearm, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, and other weapons.
