Prosecutors file a less serious charge against Washington’s protesting sandwich thrower

A person walks past street art depicting Sandwich Guy, former Justice Department employee Sean Charles Dunn. Dunn was arrested after throwing a deli sandwich at a federal police officer amid US President Donald Trump’s law enforcement move in the District. Photo / Tom Brenner, for The Washington Post

Federal prosecutors filed a misdemeanour charge against a Washington DC man who threw a sandwich at a federal officer in protest against President Donald Trump’s law enforcement surge in the United States city.

Prosecutors shifted tactics after a grand jury declined to indict Sean Charles Dunn on a more serious felony criminal count.

US Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office has failed at least four times this month to persuade grand jurors to indict people who have been accused of assaulting, resisting, or impeding federal officers, an extraordinary turn given that grand juries almost always approve indictments.

The rare resistance from a body of local citizens shows the limits of Pirro’s strategy of seeking the toughest possible charges for all defendants arrested amid Trump’s crime crackdown.

A prosecutor in Pirro’s office filed a one-page criminal information document yesterday charging Dunn, 37, with a misdemeanour count of assaulting, resisting or impeding a federal officer during the August 10 incident, which was captured on a viral social media video.

US officials said in court filings that Dunn, who worked as a paralegal at the Justice Department before being fired over the sandwich-throwing, berated a group of federal law enforcement officers at a popular nightlife area at the intersection of 14th and U streets NW.

He called them fascists, chanted “shame”, told them to leave the city, and ultimately pelted an officer from Customs and Border Protection with a sub.

Dunn was arrested days later at his DC apartment in what his lawyer, Sabrina Shroff, described in court as a 20-person raid.

The White House featured the arrest in a sleek social media video. Pirro took to her X account to jab back after the arrest.

“He thought it was funny. Well, he doesn’t think it’s funny today because we charged him with a felony,” Pirro said. “So there. Stick your Subway sandwich somewhere else!”

The US Attorney’s office and Dunn’s lawyer did not immediately respond to requests for comment today.

Days before the DC grand jury voted on Wednesday not to indict Dunn, grand jurors in the same courthouse voted three separate times not to indict Sydney Reid.

Prosecutors said an FBI agent injured her hand as Reid rowdily protested against a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrest at the doors of the DC jail last month. Officials said the man was a gang member.

After the grand jury refused to indict her, Reid was also charged with a misdemeanour violation of assaulting, resisting or impeding a federal officer.

Without the approval of at least 12 grand jurors, prosecutors cannot file felony charges punishable by more than one year in prison.

They are allowed to charge misdemeanour violations, for which the maximum sentence is a year in jail, without grand jury approval.

In the Dunn and Reid cases, a felony conviction would have been punishable by up to eight years in prison, though neither defendant would have been eligible for the maximum.

Asked about Reid’s case at a news conference on Wednesday, Pirro declined to speculate about how juries in DC might respond to prosecutors requesting indictments as Trump’s intervention continues.

“Sometimes a jury will buy it and sometimes they won’t,” she said. “So be it. That’s the way the process works.”

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