The D.C. man who went viral for allegedly throwing a sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection officer last month was arraigned in federal court Wednesday on a misdemeanor charge of assaulting a federal agent.
Sean Charles Dunn, who’s accused of hurling the hoagie amidst President Donald Trump’s federal takeover of law enforcement in Washington, now faces a jury trial set for early November.
The charge carries up to a year of jail time.
The case is one of several in which prosecutors allege D.C. residents “assaulted” or “impeded” federal agents in the course of their duties during Trump’s crime and immigration crackdown in the nation’s capital. Defense attorneys have said many of these cases are overblown and not worth the court’s time and resources.
A grand jury already declined to indict Dunn on a federal charge of assaulting a federal officer — one of many embarrassing rejections grand juries have delivered to Jeanine Pirro, the former Fox News personality who is now Trump’s U.S. Attorney for D.C. The failure to secure an indictment led Pirro’s office to file the misdemeanor charge, which doesn’t need a grand jury’s review.
A lawyer for Dunn declined to comment after a short hearing before a judge in federal court Wednesday.
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Trump has tried to cast D.C. as a hellscape filled with criminals and in need of a federal takeover, despite violent crime recently dropping to a 30-year low. While plenty of residents do have concerns about crime, an overwhelming majority oppose the way he has federalized local law enforcement and flooded the streets with agents from the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies.
Dunn, a former Justice Department employee, became something of a folk hero for the alleged sandwich toss, with images popping up around town portraying a man tossing a hoagie as an act of resistance.
Pirro’s office seems to be charging as many D.C. arrestees as possible on the stiffest charges they can find, even in apparently minor cases. The city’s courts have been buckling under a heavier caseload.
Grand juries have declined to indict at least seven times in five cases involving run-ins between defendants and federal officers in D.C. over the past two months – a sure sign that residents are not buying Pirro’s allegations.
After his hearing Wednesday, Dunn left the courtroom and, before hopping in an elevator, briefly thanked an apparent supporter who was waiting in the hallway.
“You got this,” the supporter told him.