From the Complaint in Bushart v. Perry County (W.D. Tenn.); as usual, note that these are just allegations, and I look forward to seeing any eventual court decision:
Larry Bushart spent 37 days behind bars simply for speaking his mind. It took a national uproar about his detention for Perry County officials to drop the charge against Mr. Bushart—a charge officials knew from the outset was unfounded.
On September 10, 2025, a gunman assassinated conservative commentator Charlie Kirk as he debated members of his audience at a Utah university. The attack dominated the national conversation. As many mourned Kirk, a passionate advocate for Second Amendment rights, others exercised their First Amendment rights by arguing his killing evidenced a need for stricter gun control measures. Some argued gun-rights advocates had downplayed gun violence in the past.
Ten days after Kirk's death, Larry Bushart—a 61-year-old retired law enforcement officer and a resident of Lexington, Tennessee—noticed a Facebook post promoting a candlelight vigil in nearby Perry County. Underneath it, he posted a series of political memes, the internet's version of political cartoons. One image (the "Meme") accurately quoted a statement President Donald Trump made after a January 2024 shooting at Perry High School in Perry, Iowa:
Defendant Perry County Sheriff Nick Weems understood Mr. Bushart's political message. He later acknowledged in a media interview that he and his deputies "knew" the Meme was not about Perry County High School in Tennessee, but about a 2024 shooting at a Perry High School in Iowa—a different school with a different name in a different state, some 695 miles away.
