New York City police have removed another suspicious package, this time addressed to Robert De Niro and mailed to 375 Greenwich Street, the headquarters of De Niro’s Tribeca Enterprises, which presents the Tribeca Film Festival, according to a rep for Tribeca Enterprises and multiple reports.
The item looked similar to the devices sent to top Democrats and CNN.
Police were called at 4:45 a.m. ET on Thursday about the package, which was on the building’s seventh floor, CNN reported.
Like many of the other packages, the return address was that of Democratic Florida congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, CNN added.
Like the other packages, this one had six American-flag stamps in two rows and no postmark, according to CNN.
The NYPD later confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter that the package came from the same sender as whoever mailed the previous suspicious mailings.
In a statement, Tribeca Enterprises explained, “A suspicious package was received. We called the police. They took it out and went through all safety procedures. It was addressed to Robert De Niro and is similar packaging to the others. It is an open investigation. Everyone is safe and the building is open.”
De Niro has been a vocal critic of President Trump, famously shouting “Fuck Trump” from the Tony Awards stage earlier this year.
The president responded to that attack on Twitter by calling the Oscar winner a “low IQ individual,” a description that the president has also ascribed to another target of the suspicious packages, Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters.
“Robert De Niro, a very Low IQ individual, has received to many shots to the head by real boxers in movies,” Trump tweeted. “I watched him last night and truly believe he may be ‘punch-drunk.’ I guess he doesn’t realize the economy is the best it’s ever been with employment being at an all time high, and many companies pouring back into our country. Wake up Punchy!”
De Niro specifically called out Trump’s attacks on the media during the promotion of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, which ended with the premiere of the Showtime doc series The Fourth Estate, which explored how the New York Times covered the first year of Trump’s administration.
The president, De Niro told THR ahead of this year’s festival, “has no respect for [the truth]. … It’s very dangerous what he’s doing.”
At the festival’s kick-off lunch, he added, “America’s being run by a madman who wouldn’t recognize the truth if it came inside a bucket of his beloved Colonel Sanders Fried Chicken. When he doesn’t like what he hears, he dismisses it by saying it’s un-American and damning it as ‘fake news.’ But we know the truth. All thinking people do know the truth. Your job is difficult enough without being attacked by our lowlife-in-chief,” he quipped. “That’s the new name I have for him.”
Speaking before The Fourth Estate‘s premiere, De Niro said, “It’s a funny thing about calling something ‘fake news’ just because you don’t like it. It’s still news, and when it’s the truth, it’s the truth. And when it exposes you as a liar, a scam artist and a criminal, that so-called fake news can lead you to doing real time.”
He then reiterated what he’d previously said about his role as special counsel Robert Mueller, which he repeatedly played on Saturday Night Live last spring: “I hope I get to do that on Saturday Night Live: Depose him, interview him, interrogate him, whatever you want to call it, and then I want to put him in handcuffs and take him to jail.”
De Niro also lashed out at Trump in an impassioned speech at the National Board of Review awards in January.
“This fucking idiot is president. It’s the Emperor’s New Clothes. The guy is a fucking fool,” De Niro said in part. “Our government today, with the propping of our baby-in-chief — the jerkoff-in-chief, I call him — has put the press under siege, ridiculing it and trying to discredit it through outrageous attacks and lies. And again, just like in 1971, the press is distinguishing itself with brave, exacting journalism.”
Early Thursday, Trump also continued to blame the media for the climate of anger in the U.S., continuing a theme from his rally speech in Wisconsin on Wednesday night.
“A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News,” the president wrote. “It has gotten so bad and hateful that it is beyond description. Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST!”
The De Niro package comes after explosive devices were found earlier this week to be addressed to CNN, left-leaning financier George Soros, former Secretary of State and 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and former president Barack Obama. The CNN package prompted an evacuation of the cable news network’s New York office at the Time Warner Center in Manhattan.
Other suspicious packages were sent to other top Democrats including New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Obama’s attorney general Eric Holder.
Read more at Hollywood Reporter
