The D.C. man who went viral for allegedly throwing a sandwich at a Customs and Border Safety officer final month was arraigned in federal court docket Wednesday on a misdemeanor cost of assaulting a federal agent.
Sean Charles Dunn, who’s accused of hurling the hoagie amidst President Donald Trump’s federal takeover of legislation enforcement in Washington, now faces a jury trial set for early November.
The cost carries as much as a 12 months of jail time.
The case is considered one of a number of through which prosecutors allege D.C. residents “assaulted” or “impeded” federal brokers in the middle of their duties throughout Trump’s crime and immigration crackdown within the nation’s capital. Protection attorneys have mentioned many of those instances are overblown and never definitely worth the court docket’s time and assets.
A grand jury already declined to indict Dunn on a federal cost of assaulting a federal officer — considered one of many embarrassing rejections grand juries have delivered to Jeanine Pirro, the previous Fox Information persona who’s now Trump’s U.S. Lawyer for D.C. The failure to safe an indictment led Pirro’s workplace to file the misdemeanor cost, which doesn’t want a grand jury’s evaluate.
A lawyer for Dunn declined to remark after a brief listening to earlier than a choose in federal court docket Wednesday.
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Trump has tried to solid D.C. as a hellscape stuffed with criminals and in want of a federal takeover, regardless of violent crime not too long ago dropping to a 30-year low. Whereas loads of residents do have issues about crime, an overwhelming majority oppose the way in which he has federalized native legislation enforcement and flooded the streets with brokers from the Division of Homeland Safety, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and different businesses.
Dunn, a former Justice Division worker, turned one thing of a folks hero for the alleged sandwich toss, with pictures popping up round city portraying a person tossing a hoagie as an act of resistance.
Pirro’s workplace appears to be charging as many D.C. arrestees as attainable on the stiffest costs they will discover, even in apparently minor instances. The town’s courts have been buckling below a heavier caseload.
Grand juries have declined to indict no less than seven instances in 5 instances involving run-ins between defendants and federal officers in D.C. over the previous two months – a certain signal that residents usually are not shopping for Pirro’s allegations.
After his listening to Wednesday, Dunn left the courtroom and, earlier than hopping in an elevator, briefly thanked an obvious supporter who was ready within the hallway.
“You bought this,” the supporter informed him.
