Suspicious package sent to Robert De Niro in New York

NEW YORK: A suspicious package was sent to Oscar-winning actor Robert De Niro, who along with prominent Democrats who received pipe bombs this week has been critical of President Donald Trump, New York police said Thursday.

An employee of TriBeCa Productions, a television and film production company co-founded by the Hollywood megastar, alerted police to the package around 5:00 am (0900 GMT), a police spokesman told AFP.

Police dispatched the bomb squad and the package was removed for analysis, the spokesman said.

The package was outwardly similar in appearance to those received by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, other prominent Democratic figures and CNN in a spree of pipe-bomb mailings that began on Monday.

In June, 75-year-old De Niro received a standing ovation at the Tony Awards in New York for using an expletive to condemn Trump.

When Trump was campaigning for president in 2016, the New York-born actor slammed the Republican candidate as “blatantly stupid,” “totally nuts” and an “idiot.”

The president, meanwhile, accused the media of stirring up “anger” as the United States reels from the series of suspicious packages and pipe bombs.

“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,” Trump tweeted.

“It has gotten so bad and hateful that it is beyond description. Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST!”