Hurling a sandwich at a federal agent was an act of protest for Washington, D.C., resident Sean Charles Dunn.
A jury must decide if it was also a federal crime.
“No matter who you are, you can’t just go around throwing stuff at people because you’re mad,” assistant U.S. attorney John Parron told jurors on Tuesday at the start of Dunn’s trial on a misdemeanour assault charge.
Dunn doesn’t dispute that he threw his subway-style sandwich at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent outside a nightclub on the night of Aug. 10.
It was an “exclamation point” for Dunn as he expressed his opposition to President Donald Trump’s law-enforcement surge in the country’s capital, defence attorney Julia Gatto said during the trial’s opening statements.
“It was a harmless gesture at the end of him exercising his right to speak out,” Gatto said. “He is overwhelmingly not guilty.”
A bystander’s cellphone video of the confrontation went viral on social media, turning Dunn into a symbol of resistance against Trump’s months-long federal takeover. Murals depicting him mid-throw popped up in the city virtually overnight.
“He did it. He threw the sandwich,” Gatto told jurors.
“And now the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia has turned that moment — a thrown sandwich — into a criminal case, a federal criminal case charging a federal offence.”
You could smell the onions and the mustard.– Gregory Lairmore, CBP agent
A grand jury refused to indict Dunn on a felony assault count. After the rare rebuke from the grand jury, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office charged Dunn instead with a misdemeanour.
Customs and Border Patrol agent Gregory Lairmore, the government’s first witness, said the sandwich “exploded” when it struck his chest hard enough that he could feel it through his ballistic vest.
“You could smell the onions and the mustard,” he said.
Lairmore and other CBP agents were standing in front of a club hosting a Latin-themed night when Dunn approached and shouted profanities at them, calling them “fascists” and “racists” and chanting “shame” toward them.
“Why are you here? I don’t want you in my city!” Dunn shouted, according to police.
Lairmore testified that he and the other agents tried to de-escalate the situation.
“He was red-faced. Enraged. Calling me and my colleagues all kinds of names,” he said. “I didn’t respond. That’s his constitutional right to express his opinion.”
Agents joked about it, court hears
After throwing the sandwich, Dunn ran away but was apprehended about a block away.
Later, once the viral video spread on the internet, Lairmore’s colleagues jokingly gave him gifts making light of the incident, including a subway sandwich-shaped plush toy and a patch that said “felony footlong.”
Defence attorney Sabrina Schroff said it was proof the agents recognize this case is “overblown” and “worthy of a joke.”
Parron told jurors that everybody is entitled to their views about Trump’s federal surge.
“Respectfully, that’s not what this case is about,” the prosecutor said. “You just can’t do what the defendant did here. He crossed a line.”
Dunn was a Justice Department employee who worked as an international affairs specialist in its criminal division. After Dunn’s arrest, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced his firing in a social media post that referred to him as “an example of the Deep State.”
After allowing National Guard troops in Washington to carry weapons, U.S. President Donald Trump discussed plans to expand the use of the military in cities across the country.
He was released from custody but rearrested when a team of armed federal agents in riot gear raided his home. The White House posted a highly produced “propaganda” video of the raid on its official X account, Dunn’s lawyers said.
They noted that Dunn had offered to surrender to police before the raid.
Dunn’s lawyers have argued that the posts by Bondi and the White House prove Dunn was impermissibly targeted for his political speech. They urged U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols to dismiss the case for what they allege is a vindictive and selective prosecution.
Nichols, who was nominated by Trump, didn’t rule on that request before the trial started Monday.
Dunn is charged with assaulting, resisting, opposing, impeding, intimidating and interfering with a federal officer.
National Guard in multiple cities
Dozens of Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol were convicted of felonies for assaulting or interfering with police during the Jan. 6 attack. Trump pardoned or ordered the dismissal of charges for all of them, including leaders of extremist groups who had been convicted of sedition.
Trump issued an executive order in August declaring a crime emergency in the country’s capital, even as the Justice Department had recently indicated that crime there was at a 30-year low.
Within a month, more than 2,300 Guard troops dispatched to D.C. from Republican-led states were patrolling under the army secretary’s command. Trump also deployed hundreds of federal agents to assist them.
U.S. President Donald Trump says he’s deploying the National Guard ‘to protect war ravaged Portland,’ in a social media post on Saturday. CBC’s Julia Wong spoke with some of the city’s residents ahead of the troops’ arrival, who offered a different perspective on what they’re seeing.
Trump has heralded his crime-fighting campaign in the country’s capital as a resounding success. Data shows crime has decreased during that time, but the presence of troops, at times armed, has been enough to unnerve residents, although no violent incidents in D.C. have been reported.
The Guard troops have patrolled transit hubs and tourist sites and as the deployment has dragged on, have become a fixture of the city’s urban scenery at parks and in neighbourhoods.
Trump has sought to send National Guard troops or even marines to several cities this year, including Los Angeles, Memphis, Chicago and Portland.
CBP and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have been accused of aggressive tactics in several incidents while carrying out the Trump administration’s agenda of an aggressive deportation effort to remove unauthorized persons from the country.
In Chicago, a judge has expressed concern about the use of tear gas by CBP, and an ICE agent fatally shot a man in September.
The patrols by agents have led to peaceful protests across the country, but also sporadic incidents of violence. A man was fatally shot after opening fire in July in a Texas border patrol station, while in September two detainees were shot to death near an ICE building in Dallas by a sniper who later killed himself.
