Sean Dunn went on trial Tuesday for throwing a sandwich at a federal agent to protest President Donald Trump’s troop deployment to the city. Photo by Pat Benic/UPI | License Photo
A Washington man who hurled a sandwich at a Border Patrol officer in protest of President Donald Trump’s troop deployment went on trial Tuesday for a misdemeanor charge.
The trial centers on an incident in August when Sean Charles Dunn, 37, threw a sandwich at the officer and shouted obscenities at other federal agents over their presence in the nation’s capital.
Videos of the incident went viral, and Dunn became something of a folk hero to opponents of Trump’s deployment of federal agents to combat what the president described as rampant crime.
A federal grand jury declined to indict Dunn on a felony, but prosecutors later filed a misdemeanor charge of assaulting a federal agent, which carries a potential penalty of one year in jail, fines and probation.
Federal misdemeanor charges can be brought without a grand jury.
Dunn, a former paralegal and Air Force veteran, admits to throwing the sandwich.
During opening arguments, defense attorney Julia Gatto called his action a “harmless gesture” that did not rise to the level of assault, The Washington Post reported.
“Sean Dunn expressed his opinions,” Gatto said in her opening statement.
“He expressed them loudly, and he expressed them, maybe you think vulgarly, but he expressed his opinions,” she said. “But words without force are never assault.”
Prosecutor John Parron argued that the case is straightforward and that the law prohibits throwing objects at people, the paper reported.
“You can’t do it with your neighbor,” he said. “You can’t do it with federal law enforcement.”
Greg Lairmore, the offended Border Patrol officer, also testified about what led up to the sandwich-throwing incident, CNN reported.
He described to jurors how Dunn “became really irritated and started yelling obscenities” at him and other officers before he threw “a subway-style sandwich at me that struck me in the chest.”
“It smelled of onions and mustard,” Lairmore recalled, saying it “exploded all over my chest.”
However, Sabrina Shroff, another attorney for Dunn, showed Lairmore a photo showing the sandwich on the ground that was still wrapped in Subway paper, reported CNN.
“Can you tell if it’s a turkey sandwich?” Sabrina asked. “Lettuce? Tomatoes?”
Lairmore responded that he could not tell, but he had mustard stains on his uniform and pieces of the sandwich stuck to his radio equipment.
