“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 on Tuesday at the start of Dunn’s trial on a misdemeanor assault charge.
Dunn doesn’t dispute that he threw his submarine-style sandwich at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent outside a nightclub on the night of Aug. 10. It was an “exclamation point” for Dunn as he expressed his opposition to President Donald Trump’s law-enforcement surge in the nation’s capital, defense attorney Julia Gatto said during the trial’s opening statements.
“It was a harmless gesture at the end of him exercising his right to speak out,” Gatto said. “He is overwhelmingly not guilty.”
“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.”
CBP Agent Gregory Lairmore, the government’s first witness, said the sandwich “exploded” when it struck his chest hard enough that he could feel it through his ballistic vest.
“You could smell the onions and the mustard,” he recalled.
Lairmore and other CBP agents were standing in front of a club hosting a “Latin Night” when Dunn approached and shouted profanities at them, calling them “fascists” and “racists” and chanting “shame.”
“Why are you here? I don’t want you in my city!” Dunn shouted, according to police.
Lairmore testified that he and the other agents tried to de-escalate the situation.
“He was red-faced. Enraged. 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 off but was apprehended about a block away. Jurors saw video from an officer’s body camera after Dunn’s arrest.
“I was trying to draw them away from where they were,” Dunn said on the video. “I succeeded.”
Later, Lairmore’s colleagues jokingly gave him gifts making light of the incident, including a sandwich-shaped plush toy and a patch that said “felony footlong.” Defense attorney Sabrina Schroff pointed to those as proof that the agents recognize this case is “overblown” and “worthy of a joke.”
It’s unclear if Dunn will testify after his trial resumes on Wednesday. One of his attorneys indicated on Tuesday that he hadn’t yet decided whether to take the stand once the government rests its case.
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 is charged with assaulting, resisting, opposing, impeding, intimidating and interfering with a federal officer. Dozens of Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol were convicted of felonies for assaulting or interfering with police during the Jan. 6 attack. Trump pardoned or ordered the dismissal of charges for all of them.
