It was the hoagie heard around the world. Now the man who hurled it—and the footlong itself—are on trial.
A jury in Washington D.C. started hearing Tuesday the case against the man who agrees he threw a footlong at a federal agent surged into Washington D.C. by Donald Trump in August. The 12 citizens have to decide if DOJ paralegal Sean Dunn is guilty of misdemeanor assault, or was simply exercising his First Amendment rights.
Convicting Dunn, who was fired from his job, has become a personal mission for Trump’s United States District Attorney in D.C., Fox News personality “Judge” Jeanine Pirro, who failed to get a grand jury to agree to felony charges. She then took the rare step of pursuing a misdemeanor charge of assaulting, resisting, opposing, impeding, intimidating and interfering with a federal officer instead.
Dunn is accused of shouting “f---ing fascists” at a group of federal agents outside a Subway 14th St. N.W. in D.C. at 11p.m. on Sunday August 10. Prosecutors allege he said, “F--- you! You f---ing fascists! Why are you here? I don’t want you in my city!” before “winding his arm back and forcefully throwing a sub-style sandwich” at Border Patrol Agent Gregory Lairmore.
Footage of the sandwich stand-off went viral almost instantly and Dunn was quickly identified, fired, called a member of the “deep state” by Pirro and finally arrested in a SWAT-style raid on his home filmed by the DOJ and released gleefully by the White House. If convicted, Dunn would face a maximum of six months in jail and a $1000 fine.
Dunn’s attorney, Julia Gatto, told the jury Tuesday that Dunn “did it,” saying, “He threw the sandwich,” CNN reported.
But then the defense turned the proceedings upside down by effectively putting Lairmore on trial.
“The sandwich kind of exploded all over my uniform,” Lairmore initially told the jury. “It smelled of onions and mustard.”
A second defense attorney Sabrina Shroff, however, showed a photo of an almost intact sandwich lying on the ground.“In fact that sandwich hasn’t exploded at all,” she said.
“From the photo it looks bent and out of shape,” the officer said.
“Can you tell if it’s a turkey sandwich?” Shroff asked him. “Lettuce? Tomatoes?”
Lairmore maintained in a re-examination by prosecutors that he had “mustard and condiments on my uniform, and an onion hanging from my radio antenna that night.”
But Lairmore also admitted that far from being a traumatized victim of assault, he found the aftermath funny. Other agents gave him presents including a badge saying “felony footlong,” and a plush sandwich which he put in his office.
Even at the start of the trial, prosecutors acknowledged they are on the back foot with a D.C. jury. Prosecutor John Parron told the jury “we are not trying to convince you” that Trump’s troop surge was popular. “But respectfully, that’s not what this case is about,” he said. “This case is about the fact that you can’t go around throwing stuff at people when you’re mad.”
The jurors have to decide if Lairmore suffered forcible injury.
“They will not come close to convincing you beyond a reasonable doubt the conduct was forcible,” Gatto told jurors.
Dunn’s team were due to decide overnight whether to put him on the stand in his own defense. He has already become famous: His hoagie-hurling is now commemorated around D.C. with a Banksie-style mural of Dunn in action.
The allegedly sandwich-spattered agent however, now has his own slice of fame, in the form of widespread online mockery Tuesday after his testimony.
