A bomb was found in a mailbox at George Soros’s home in Bedford, N.Y. A police bomb squad blew it up, and the FBI’s anti-terrorism unit is now investigating.
The Bedford Police Department told NPR that one of Soros’s employees found a suspicious package in the mailbox and opened it, finding the explosive device. They then put the package in the woods and called the cops, who sent a bomb squad to safely detonate it. Soros himself was not at home at the time, according to the New York Times.
We are conducting an investigation at and around a residence in Bedford, NY. There is no threat to public safety, and we have no further comment at this time.
— FBI New York (@NewYorkFBI) October 23, 2018
The billionaire investor has long backed liberal, pro-migrant and pro-democracy causes, and last year made his Open Society Foundations one of the biggest non-profits in the world, by donating $18 billion to the NGO.
As such, Soros has become a favorite boogeyman for the far right in the U.S. And parts of Europe. In Hungary, Viktor Orbán’s government this year passed a “Stop Soros” law that bans civil society groups from aiding migrants. And in the U.S., President Donald Trump just this month claimed Soros had paid protestors against the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
Soros has also been falsely accused by Republicans of paying people in Central America to join the “migrant caravan” that is slowly heading toward the U.S.’s southern border. Trump has threatened to cut aid to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador for allowing people to join the caravan, which he claims is a national emergency.
As the Hungarian-American Soros happens to be Jewish, many of the conspiracy theories surrounding his activities have carried anti-Semitic undertones as well. In 2017, Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán’s billboard campaign against migration and foreign influence—which used an image of Soros—was widely seen as anti-Semitic. “Please make sure this bad dream ends as soon as possible,” Andras Heisler, chairman of the Federation of Hungarian Jewish Federations, said at the time.
And during his run for the presidency in 2016, Trump unveiled a two-minute campaign ad that portrayed Soros—along with figures such as Fed chair Janet Yellen and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein—as supporters of Hillary Clinton in a conspiracy of international elites against the American people. As Soros, Yellen, and Blankfein are Jewish, the ad was criticized by the Anti-Defamation League for using “rhetoric and tropes that historically have been used against Jews and still spur antisemitism.”