Pascale Ferrier, a French-Canadian left-extremist, has been sentenced to nearly 22 years in prison, after being found guilty on biological weapons charges, for sending letters laced with ricin to former President Donald J. Trump. Ricin is a lectin (a carbohydrate-binding protein), a highly potent toxin produced in the seeds of the castor oil plant.
Admitting to sending the ricin-laced letters, to then-President Trump in September of 2020, from Canada, Ms. Ferrier, 55, pled guilty to the charges against her. According to CBC reports, after pleading guilty to the charges of biological weaponry, Ferrier told a U.S. judge in Washington D.C. she needed “to move on now” and was sentenced to 21 years and 10 months in prison,
Ferrier told the court-
“I analyzed and weighed all possible options. These plea agreements are not the best but the least deleterious design by the criminal “injustice’ system”
-Pascale Ferrier, a French-Canadian Left-Extremist
Ferrier, was arrested at the U.S.-Canada border in September of 2020, after she had mailed the poison-laced letter, which also demanded that President Trump drop out of his re-election bid. Ms. Ferrier was born in France before moving to the French-speaking province of Quebec. Ferrier in with the poison, wrote-
“So, I made a ‘special gift’ for you to make a decision. This gift is in this letter,”… “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. Enjoy! FREE REBEL SPIRIT.”
-Pascale Ferrier, a French-Canadian Left-Extremist
After the hearing, D.C. U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves said
[there] “is no place for political violence in our country and no excuse for threatening public officials or endangering our public servants.”…“We hope this resolution will serve as a warning that using our mail system to send a toxic substance and other threats of this type will cost you your freedom for many years,”
-Matthew Graves, D.C. U.S. Attorney
Also included were eight charges from another case in Texas, that were apart of Ferrier’s guilty plea. In that case, she had sent more ricin-laced letters to prison officials, police officers, and others, after she had been arrested there in 2019, spending a total of ten weeks in jail.
Sounding less than remorseful, for her crimes, it is fitting that Ferrier have several years to consider the consequences of her actions. She obviously needs time to consider the freedoms, that she has lost, because she threatened the lives of many, including a sitting U.S. President. As Graves put it aptly, “there is no place for political violence in our country”.
“Personal responsibility is a more valuable position than any political grievance.”
-Evan Thomsen