An employee of the residence opened the package, revealing what appeared to be an explosive device,” the police said in a statement. “The employee placed the package in a wooded area and called the Bedford police.”
Mr. Soros was not home at the time.
The police said they had turned the case over to the F.B.I., which did not immediately respond to requests for comment. In a tweet late Monday night, the bureau’s New York office said it was conducting an investigation “at and around a residence in Bedford” and that there was no threat to public safety.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives did not respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Soros, who was born in Hungary, made his fortune running a hedge fund and is now a full-time philanthropist and political activist. He donates frequently to Democratic candidates and progressive causes and has given at least $18 billion to his Open Society Foundations to promote democracy and human rights around the world.
His activism has made him a villain to conservative groups and the target of anti-Semitic smears . Roseanne Barr called him a Nazi in an infamous tweetstorm , and just this month, Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, falsely speculated that Mr. Soros had funded a caravan of migrants moving north toward Mexico. There is no evidence that Mr. Soros paid thousands of migrants to storm the border. Nor is there evidence that Democrats support the effort, as Mr. Trump has said.
Mr. Soros became a major political donor in the United States during George W. Bush’s presidency. He spent millions backing John Kerry’s unsuccessful bid to deny Mr. Bush a second term, was an early backer of Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and contributed more than $25 million to Hillary Clinton and other Democratic candidates and causes during the 2016 election cycle.
Though Mr. Soros’s name has become a trigger for large subsets of Republicans and conservatives, he has said that his main goal as a political activist was to see a return to bipartisanship.
He has said it was the extremism of the Republican Party that had prompted him to become a major Democratic donor, but said he is also opposed to the extreme left.
“I don’t particularly want to be a Democrat,” he said.
BREAKING: Explosive device found near George Soros’s home in Westchester County, New York – NYT
— Josh Caplan (@joshdcaplan) October 23, 2018
AC