It's not a lump of coal. It might be worse.
Two days before Christmas, treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin opened a gift box delivered to his Bel Air home, only to find it full of horse manure. The “gift” was the work of a Los Angeles-area psychologist, who said he sent it to protest the recently approved tax bill.
The stunt drew the attention of the Secret Service and a bomb squad, but as yet, no charges. So what's the line between ordinary mischief and the criminal kind?
It's a question with local resonance. The same day Mnuchin's manure arrived, Jacksonville attorney John Phillips found an equally smelly surprise in his mailbox.
In a video posted to Facebook, Phillips dangles the clear plastic bag, and reads the typed message. “It says 'You've been pooped on.'”
“It's flattering,” Phillips said in the video. “It's what I call rocket fuel. It's what keeps me going. Because if you don't have haters, you're not doing it right.”
Poop by mail is actually a thing. Multiple websites offer you the choice of animal -- and even a choice of excrement. One site advertises “sloth s***, wolf urine and komodo dragon poop.” The sites also promise the sender total anonymity.
The missives clearly redefine the term “gag” gift. But according to Jacksonville attorney Susan Cohen, they're not actually illegal.
“Horse manure is not per se a hazardous material” she says. Federal law prohibits mailing items like explosives, gas or ammo. It's also illegal to threaten to hurt someone. But Cohen says there is nothing explicitly illegal about mailing poop.
The same is true of less repulsive, but still messy, missives, like glitter bombs, which explode all over the recipient.
Unless the gift itself damages property, or is accompanied by an explicit threat, Cohen says, the law is silent on the issue.
“The real question is: Is that a threat, is somebody threatening somebody? Or are they just offending somebody, which is not a criminal matter.”
Just because there is no law yet, however, doesn't mean there will never be.
“I think it safe to say we're in a new age,” Cohen said. And at some point, it may be necessary for a court to determine “how far does speech go -- and is poop itself speech?”