A Maine woman was arrested Friday and is facing federal charges for allegedly mailing a threatening letter to Senator Susan Collins (R., Maine) shortly after she voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
An affidavit filed in U.S. District Court and reviewed by the Associated Press says that Suzanne Muscara, a 37-year-old Burlington native, sent starch to Collins’s Bangor home along with a letter that was said to have been covered in “ricin residue.”
In the letter, sent shortly after Collins voted to confirm Kavanaugh despite the fierce opposition of activists and congressional Democrats convinced by the sexual-assault allegations leveled against him, Muscara accused Collins of having “betrayed the people of Maine.”
Collins, a centrist who supports Planned Parenthood and abortion rights, was attacked by liberal activists and lawmakers for supporting the confirmation of a nominee who many believed would help overturn Roe v. Wade, and who faced unsubstantiated allegations of sexual assault. As a result, she was targeted for harassment and reported receiving volumes of hate mail as well as a “three-foot-long cardboard cutout of male genitalia,” which was mailed to her Washington, D.C. office.
“There was an envelope that arrived a few days after the ricin envelope and letter that had white powder in it,” Collins said during a December 2018 interview. “And fortunately, the Postal Service inspector did a great job intercepting it, and you have to treat everything like that seriously. It said anthrax ha, ha, ha. And . . . it was a very difficult time.”