Agents tracing source of bomb found in mailbox at Soros’s New York home

NEW YORK — Federal agents were piecing together on Tuesday how a small bomb ended up in a mailbox outside a New York home owned by billionaire financier George Soros.

Mr. Soros, one of the world’s biggest donors to liberal groups and causes, was not there at the time on Monday.

Investigators have not named any suspects or disclosed a possible motive, but Mr. Soros has become a hated figure among some right-wing activists in the United States and Eastern Europe, and the target of a hostile media campaign by the nationalist government in his native Hungary.

An employee at the home in Katonah, an upscale hamlet about 66 kilometers north of New York City, opened a package at around 3:45 p.m. ET (1945 GMT) on Monday and found what appeared to be an explosive device, the Bedford Police Department said.

Agents described it as a small pipe bomb made from about 6 inches of pipe filled with explosive powder, and said the package appeared to have been hand-delivered rather than sent through the mail, The New York Times reported.

Bomb squad technicians detonated it in a nearby wooded area, police said.

There was no warning of a possible threat to Mr. Soros, and there was no continuing threat to Mr. Soros or the public, a law enforcement official said. The FBI’s New York field office did not respond to a request for comment.

A Jew who survived the Nazi occupation of Hungary, Mr. Soros is a frequent target of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that circulate in right-wing forums online. —