A federal immigration officer has claimed that a sandwich thrown at him by a protester “exploded” on impact with such force that he felt it through his ballistic vest.
“You could smell the onions and mustard,” said CBP Agent Gregory Lairmore, speaking Tuesday on the first day of the trial of Sean Charles Dunn, who was initially slapped with a felony charge over the incident.
Dunn, a Washington D.C. resident, has not disputed throwing his footlong sub sandwich at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent outside a nightclub on the night of August 10.
Lairmore and other CBP agents were standing in front of the club which was hosting a “Latin Night” when Dunn approached and shouted profanities at them, calling them “fascists” and “racists” and chanting “shame." After approaching them he threw the sandwich he was holding and ran away.
“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 Tuesday. Dunn is charged with assaulting, resisting, opposing, impeding, intimidating and interfering with a federal officer.
However, Dunn’s lawyer Julia Gatto said that his action had been an “exclamation point” for her client as he expressed his opposition to President Donald Trump’s law-enforcement surge in the nation’s capital. “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 monthslong 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 offense.”
A grand jury refused to indict Dunn on a felony assault count, part of a pattern of pushback against the Justice Department's prosecution of surge-related criminal cases. After the rare rebuke from the grand jury, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office charged Dunn instead with a misdemeanor.
According to Lairmore, Dunn had been “red-faced” and “enraged” when he confronted officers, shouting at them loudly: “Why are you here? I don’t want you in my city!”
Lairmore testified that he and the other agents tried to de-escalate the situation. “[He was] calling me and my colleagues all kinds of names,” he said. “I didn't respond. That's his constitutional right to express his opinion.”
After throwing the sandwich, Dunn ran away but was apprehended about a block away. 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.”
Dunn 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.
Dunn's lawyers have argued that the posts by Bondi and the White House show 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.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
