WASHINGTON — The D.C. man accused of assaulting a U.S. Border Patrol agent with a Subway sandwich was found not guilty by a jury Thursday, the culmination of a three-month criminal case that was both an absurd spectacle and a deeply serious clash over protest and prosecution in the Trump era.
Sean Dunn, a 37-year-old Air Force veteran and former Justice Department paralegal, faced up to a year in jail for hurling what became known as the hoagie heard around the world. His acquittal following a two-day trial amounts to a rebuke of President Donald Trump’s immigration and crime crackdown in Washington, as well as another embarrassing legal setback for Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for D.C., whom he appointed.
“I am so happy that justice prevails in spite of everything,” Dunn said outside outside the courthouse following the verdict. “That night I believe I was protecting the rights of immigrants… Every life matters, no matter where you came from, no matter how you got here, no matter how you identify.”
Viral video from Aug. 10 showed Dunn shouting at the Border Patrol agent, Gregory Lairmore, before heaving a sandwich at his chest, running away and getting arrested after a brief foot chase. With anger brewing across the city over Trump’s takeover of city policing and deployment of the National Guard, Dunn quickly grew into a footlong folk hero and symbol of anti-Trump resistance.
Pirro’s office initially pursued a felony assault charge against Dunn, but a grand jury rebuffed prosecutors by declining to return an indictment. Eager to project the president’s tough-on-protest image, Pirro declined to drop the case and proceeded with a less serious misdemeanor charge that resulted in this week’s trial.
Prosecutors were gambling that jurors in liberal Washington would find that Dunn’s actions amounted to an “assault,” even though he was being widely celebrated and the case mocked as a joke.
In an acknowledgment of Trump’s deep unpopularity here, prosecutors told jurors that Dunn had a right to insult Lairmore and other federal agents enlisted in local policing, including calling them “fascists.” But they claimed he “crossed a line” physically by throwing the Subway sandwich into Lairmore’s chest.
“No matter who you are, you can’t just go around throwing stuff at people because you’re mad,” John Parron, an assistant U.S. attorney, argued in an opening statement.
Dunn’s defense team painted the prosecution as an overzealous waste of time. They never disputed that Dunn threw the sandwich ― only that it could have injured Lairmore, or prevented him from doing his job that night. They acknowledged their client hated that Trump was “turning his hometown into a military occupation,” and they described the sandwich hurl as an “exclamation point at the end of a verbal outburst, a harmless gesture that did not and could not cause harm or injury.”
“Dunn’s defense team painted the prosecution as an overzealous waste of time. They never disputed that Dunn threw the sandwich – only that it could have ever injured the agent.”
“He threw that sandwich at that agent, 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,” one of Dunn’s lawyers, Julia Gatto, told the jury in an opening statement.
“His conduct is not a federal criminal case,” Gatto said. “It is not close.”
After the sandwich toss the Justice Department fired Dunn from his job ― a termination Attorney General Pam Bondi publicly gloated about ― and the White House used footage of a swarm of heavily armed agents arresting Dunn in a promotional video boosting Trump’s takeover of D.C. policing.
The trial drew a gaggle of reporters to the U.S. District Court in downtown Washington, and many observers had a hard time keeping a straight face through the in-depth testimony about the deli projectile and its impact on the agent.
A key question for the jury was whether the sandwich could have resulted in “bodily harm.”
Lairmore, a division chief with 23 years at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which includes the Border Patrol, was deployed to D.C. streets as part of Trump’s executive order aimed at making the city “safe and beautiful.” He said that after Dunn exited the Subway sandwich shop, he berated Lairmore and other agents and seemed “fixated” on them. Video showed Dunn calling them “fascists” repeatedly, leaving the corner and later returning with the sandwich still in his hand.
“He threw a subway-style sandwich at me, which struck me in the chest,” the agent said, narrating a video being shown to the jury.
Lairmore testified that he was not injured by the sandwich, but said he could feel its impact through the ballistic vest he was wearing. It came apart and “kind of exploded” when it struck his chest, he testified.
“I could smell the onions and mustard,” he said.
The defense seemed happy to question Lairmore about the particulars of the sandwich, underscoring the apparent lack of seriousness of the alleged crime. They apparently wanted to convey to the jury that the case was ridiculous and unworthy of a multiday federal trial.
Sabrina Shroff, one of Dunn’s lawyers, pressed Lairmore on whether the sandwich really “exploded” on him. She showed the jury a photo of the sandwich lying in its Subway wrapper on the ground, apparently after it had bounced off Lairmore’s chest.
“That sandwich hasn’t exploded at all, has it?” Shroff asked him.
“It looks like a little bit is coming out towards the bottom,” Lairmore replied.
He acknowledged he couldn’t say whether it was a turkey sandwich or a ham sandwich, and wasn’t sure exactly which condiments it was topped with. But he could say definitively there were onions because one was left dangling on his radio antenna.
Lairmore appeared to smile or chuckle at some of the more amusing inquiries, including when he was asked about gag gifts he’d received from other federal agents after the incident. One was a plush sandwich toy, which he said he had placed on the shelf in his office; the other was a patch that read “Felony Footlong,” which he had put on his lunch box.
In a discussion with the judge on whether Lairmore should be questioned on the gifts, Shroff said they helped illuminate the “state of mind” at the agency and how the whole affair seemed like a joke, even to the alleged victim and his coworkers.
“Just ask yourself: Would a man genuinely injured, genuinely offended by having a sandwich thrown at him, proudly, happily, joyfully display not one but two gag gifts?” Shroff told jurors in a closing argument. “Would you stick it on your daily lunchbox and carry it around with you day in and day out? Of course not.”
The Dunn case is part of a string of prosecutions Pirro has pursued, alleging D.C. residents assaulted or impeded federal agents in the course of their duties.
“The agent testified that he was not injured by the sandwich, but said he could feel its impact through the ballistic vest he was wearing. It came apart and ‘kind of exploded’ when it struck his chest, he said.”
Trump formally declared a crime emergency in Washington the day after the sandwich incident, claiming violent crime had grown out of control despite Justice Department statistics that showed the opposite. The declaration brought National Guard members to the streets of D.C., as well as an unusual number of agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Park Police, and other federal agencies.
Many of the alleged assault cases have crumbled in embarrassing fashion, with grand juries rejecting them or prosecutors downgrading or dropping charges altogether after further investigation. That includes the case against Sidney Reid, a D.C. woman who filmed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and was accused of assaulting an FBI agent. A jury found Reid not guilty last month after a trial her attorneys called a waste of money and resources.
Dunn, with short blond hair and a mustache and goatee, sat mostly expressionless through the trial, wearing a shirt and tie beneath a fair isle sweater. He had not spoken publicly about the incident or the charges, even as posters sprang up around D.C. portraying a masked man heaving a submarine as an act of defiance, and residents decorated their yards with Dunn-inspired skeletons for Halloween.
The only speaking Dunn did during the trial was to confirm for the judge that he did not wish to testify in his defense.
The formal charge against Dunn technically covered more than just “assault” – the potential crime could also include “resisting,” “opposing,” “impeding,” or “interfering” with federal agents. Dunn’s attorneys tried unsuccessfully to limit the trial to merely a question of physical assault.
One of the main challenges for prosecutors was conveying that a sandwich toss could be considered “forcible.”
“It’s a sandwich, but [he’s] throwing it hard,” asserted prosecutor Michael DiLorenzo. “That is sufficient for force, and it meets the definition of force.”
To broaden their case, the government showed police video of Dunn post-arrest appearing to tell an officer that he had hoped to draw the agents away from their spot ― what prosecutors portrayed as Dunn successfully getting in the way of their work that night. The incident occurred in D.C.’s busy U Street NW nightlife corridor, near a LGBTQ+ bar that was hosting a Latin night that evening.
“He was trying to impede and interfere with their assignment that night,” Parron said.
But the jury ultimately didn’t agree with that assessment, either. They returned with the not-guilty verdict in about seven hours.
Speaking outside the courthouse, Shroff thanked the jurors for sending back an “affirmation” that dissent is “not just tolerated.”
“It is legal, and it is welcome,” she said.