Hefty prison sentence for Canadian who mailed ricin to Trump

WASHINGTON (CN) — A federal judge ordered a nearly 22-year prison sentence Thursday for a Canadian woman who sent threatening letters filled with ricin in September 2020 to then-President Donald Trump and eight Texas law enforcement officials.

Pascale Ferrier, a 56-year-old dual citizen of France and Canada, created the toxin at home and packaged it with a message that called Trump an “ugly tyrant clown.” At the time she mailed them, Trump was running an ultimately doomed campaign for reelection. His efforts to overturn that outcome have more recently driven criminal charges in Georgia and in Washington, D.C. Trump also faces unrelated indictments in New York and Florida.

At her sentencing in Washington on Thursday, Ferrier struck a defiant note when given an opportunity to explain her motive and what led to her trying to poison the former president.

In her view, she is an activist, not a terrorist, with strongly held beliefs of fraternity, equality and liberty. At some point, she felt that “only actions can make change” and decided she had to fight for her values, she said.

“My only regret was that my plan didn’t work, and I couldn’t stop Trump before he tried to overthrow the government,” Ferrier said, pointing to the monthslong campaign by the former president and his allies to maintain his grip on power, which culminated in the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.

In addition to Trump, Ferrier sent eight letters to officials in Texas: the chief of police of the Mission Police Department, three officers associated with the Hidalgo County Adult Detention Center, the sheriff of Hidalgo County, a warden of Brooks County Detention Center, the sheriff of Brooks County and a deputy warden of an immigration detention facility in Raymondville. She kept their names and addresses on a handwritten list in her home in Quebec.

A sentencing memorandum from the Justice Department says Ferrier blamed these eight officers for a 2019 period of incarceration after she was arrested for getting into an altercation with an officer after refusing orders to leave a park.

None of Ferrier’s letters reached their intended targets; all were first intercepted by law enforcement officials. Ferrier pleaded guilty to charges related to the letters this past January, and the two cases against her were consolidated in Washington.

In her letter to Trump, Ferrier said he was ruining the country and leading Americans to disaster.

“I have US cousins, then I don’t want the next 4 years with you as President,” she wrote. “Give up and remove your application for this election!”

In addition to ordering the sentence of 262 months, U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich stipulated that Ferrier is barred from reentering the United States after her release from prison.

These terms were calculated in part to account for an incident that occurred soon on Sept. 20, 2020, shortly after Ferrier’s letters began arriving in Washington and Texas. Stopped at a border crossing in Buffalo, New York, that day, Ferrier she told officers that she was wanted by the FBI for sending the ricin.

The officers found an arsenal of weaponry in Ferrier’s vehicle: a loaded gun, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, two knives, a stun gun, pepper spray, a baton and a fake ID.  According to her letters, this was apparently an effort to follow up on threats she had made to all but one of the targets. She wrote that she “might use [her] gun when [she] will be able to come.”

Judge Friedrich highlighted how Ferrier’s crimes departed from her academic accomplishments — she had a master’s degree in engineering — and her growing family with newly born grandchildren when she sent the letters.

“What happened that caused you to give up … this pretty good life in Canada?” Friedrich asked. “What would prompt you to jeopardize that?”

Justice Department attorney Michael Friedman said that the long sentence was necessary to send a message to people on either side of the U.S. border.

“There is absolutely no place for political violence in the United States … violence or threats of violence against law enforcement deserves harsh punishment,” Friedman said.

While Ferrier has been incarcerated in a Washington, she has participated in Georgetown University’s Prisons and Justice Initiative, through which she has completed 32 credits and has earned a GPA of over 3.9, according to her defense attorney, Eugene Ohm.

Ferrier has indicated her wish to attend an upcoming graduation ceremony before starting her sentence, noting the connections she has made with fellow inmates in the program. Friedrich said she will try to accommodate the request, joking that with such a high GPA, Ferrier is likely the valedictorian and could ask that the ceremony be moved up for her.

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