Sean Dunn was found not guilty by a Washington, D.C., jury of a misdemeanor charge of assaulting a federal officer with a sandwich, The Associated Press reported. The verdict in the case of the man who became a folk hero in the nation’s capital follows a D.C. grand jury’s refusal to approve a felony indictment against him — seemingly a much rarer occurrence prior to Donald Trump’s second presidential term.
But this year has featured several such occurrences, in both the grand jury and at trial, in cases involving alleged assaults on law enforcement and the alleged solicitation of violence against Trump himself. Another D.C. jury returned a not guilty verdict in the case of Sidney Reid, whom prosecutors also charged with a misdemeanor assault after grand jurors refused to indict her an incredible three times. A federal jury outside of D.C. in Virginia returned a not guilty verdict in the case of a man alleged to have solicited Trump’s assassination with social media posts.
The administration had sought to make an example of Dunn, who worked for the Justice Department before his arrest in August. “If you touch any law enforcement officer, we will come after you,” Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote then, adding of Dunn, “Not only is he FIRED, he has been charged with a felony.”
After grand jurors prevented the DOJ from moving forward with that felony charge, prosecutors charged him with a misdemeanor, which doesn’t require grand jury approval.
According to the initial complaint and statement of facts filed against him, Dunn allegedly called federal agents “fascists,” said he didn’t want them “in my city” and struck an agent in the chest with a “sub-style sandwich.” Ahead of trial, Dunn’s defense lawyers called his prosecution “a blatant abuse of power.” They argued that the government “has chosen to bring a criminal case over conduct so minor it would be comical — were it not for the unmistakable retaliatory motive behind it and the resulting risk to Mr. Dunn.” They noted that he “tossed a sandwich at a fully armed, heavily protected Customs and Border Protection” officer, but they maintained that “that act alone would never have drawn a federal charge. What did was the political speech that accompanied it.” Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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