October 22 – I hear my father talking in the next room. It’s late and everyone else is asleep. When I go in to ask him what the problem is, he says, “I can’t talk about it. But it’s big, it’s big.”

My father, Lieutenant Mark Torre, Commanding Officer of the NYPD Bomb Squad, had just received notice of the suspicious package found in George Soros’s mailbox.

Soros, a Hungarian-American investor and philanthropist, is a frequent donor to Democratic candidates and progressive causes and his actions often elicit rage from passionate right-wing groups.

As more identical suspicious packages were discovered, however, it became clear that the targets were not simply individuals, but rather an entire political party.

Fifteen “suspicious packages” in total containing “possible pipe bombs” were sent to prominent, left-leaning figures within a span of just 5 days. Aside from billionaire George Soros, other high-profile recipients included former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former President Barack Obama, and actor Robert De Niro.

The man arrested for allegedly making and mailing the suspicious devices, Cesar Sayoc Jr., 56, appears to be an avid supporter of President Trump. His social media accounts display little other than pro-Trump news stories, photos of him with Trump memorabilia, and video footage of a Trump rally he attended in 2016. A van authorities say belonged to Sayoc is covered with pro-Trump and anti-Democrat stickers. Sayoc was arrested October 26 in his Florida home, but has since been transferred to New York where he will face federal charges.

Meanwhile, authorities are still unsure of Sayoc’s true intent. In a collection of 15 suspicious packages, not a single device detonated. Officials are now left to question whether the packages were incapable of explosion due to inadvertent malfunction or by purposeful design. So what are we dealing with here?
According to authorities, it would be improper to call the 1-inch-by-6-inch PVC pipe contraptions anything other than “suspicious packages” or “possible pipe bombs,” for the FBI has not yet ruled them to be IEDs (improvised explosive devices). The latest update given by the FBI tells only that their “analysis [of the devices] was not yet completed,” thus continuing to leave the nature of these suspicious packages up to speculation.

So who really was Cesar Sayoc and what were his motives? Were his “bombs” really bombs? While there is still much yet to be discovered, Lieutenant Torre, who can only comment on what is known as “open source information,” highlights a key fact about all 15 mailed packages: “None of them exploded.”