A 56-year-old woman who sent letters containing ricin poison to then-President Donald Trump and eight Texas law enforcement officials in 2020 was sentenced to nearly 22 years in federal prison.
Pascale Cecile Veronique Ferrier, a dual citizen of Canada and France, was sentenced Thursday in Washington, DC after pleading guilty to two separate counts involving biological weapons in January.
Ferrier reportedly expressed no remorse for her actions at the sentencing hearing, arguing that her homemade ricin was not deadly enough to kill.
CHRISTINNE MUSCHI via Reuters
“It was just a strong warning. I don’t go after innocent people,” she said. according to NBC News. Her “only regret” is that the threatening letter to Trump didn’t stop him from seeking re-election, she added.
Ferrier confessed to making ricin, a castor bean-derived poison, at her Quebec home in September 2020, and then sending the powder to Trump and Texas law enforcement in letters threatening violence.
Ferrier suspected the Texas officials were connected to a roughly 10-week incarceration she experienced in the state in the spring of 2019 for gun possession, authorities said.
In her numerous letters, Ferrier wrote that if the “special gift” she had included didn’t “work,” court documents say she would find a better recipe or take a trip with her gun.
Ferrier also took to social media to ask someone, “Please shoot.” [Trump] … in the face,” authorities said.
Days after she sent the letter to Trump — which was intercepted by Secret Service officials — she was stopped and arrested by border patrol agents while driving from Canada to Buffalo, New York.
Authorities said she was carrying a loaded firearm, hundreds of rounds of ammunition and other weapons. According to court documents, she told officers she was “wanted by the FBI for the ricin letters.”
Her public defender had advocated the 262-month sentence, which includes life imprisonment with supervised release and possible deportation. The attorney told the judge back in May that the grandmother, a former software developer, had no criminal record and that the verdict gave her hope of “surviving jail and seeing her grandchildren.”
