A Customs and Border Patrol Agent testified in federal court on Tuesday that a sandwich “exploded all over him” after a D.C. man threw a sub-style sandwich at him during an expletive-filled rant in protest of President Trump’s federal policing crackdown and National Guard deployment in the nation’s capital this summer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sean Dunn<\/a>, who was charged<\/a> with one count of misdemeanor assault charges, has become a symbol of resistance against Mr. Trump’s D.C. policing policies, sat in a crowded courtroom as spectators, jury members, and even witnesses attempted to keep a straight face during the first day of his criminal trial<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n “He did it, he threw the sandwich,” Dunn’s attorney Julia Gatto said in her opening statement to a D.C. jury, adding their client has “very strong feelings” about the Trump administration’s federal takeover of D.C<\/a>.<\/p>\n Gatto called the viral sub-toss a “harmless gesture that did not, could not, cause injury.”<\/p>\n Customs and Border Patrol Agent Gregory Lairmore, who was hit with the footlong sub, testified Tuesday about his experience dealing with Dunn, who can be seen in video<\/a> of the incident yelling at the agent and other officers in his vicinity before throwing the wrapped sandwich at the officer’s chest. Dunn attempted to flee on foot before being apprehended, documents and video of the incident shows.<\/p>\n According to charging documents, Dunn yelled, “F*** you! You f***ing fascists! Why are you here? I don’t want you in my city,” before crossing the street. He later returned and threw the sandwich.\u00a0<\/p>\n Lairmore, who says he caught most of Dunn’s ire before catching the sandwich in his ballistic vest, saying at one point Dunn was “red-faced” and “enraged” by the police presence at a crowded intersection in Northwest Washington, D.C.\u00a0<\/p>\n To laughs in the room, Lairmore walked the jury through the “baseball pitch” of a sub throw, as another witness put it.<\/p>\n Lairmore said he “could feel it though his ballistic vest” and it “exploded all over” him after the Subway stack hit him. He said he “could smell the onions and mustard” on his uniform, and even had an onion string hanging by his police radio later that night. The fast-food mustard, he said, stained his shirt.<\/p>\n Dunn’s attorneys later pressed Lairmore on two gag gifts that his coworkers bought him after the incident, including a plush submarine sandwich and a “felony footlong” patch that Lairmore said he put on his lunchbox.\u00a0<\/p>\n They also pressed Lairmore on why there are no evidentiary photos of stains on his shirt or of the sandwich after it was thrown, only a video posted to social media platform Instagram from a bystander showing the sandwich mostly intact. Lairmore said the Metropolitan Police Department in D.C. took over the investigation after Dunn was detained, and Lairmore said the sandwich appeared at least “bent and out of shape” in its wrapper.\u00a0<\/p>\n Federal prosecutors failed to secure a felony indictment <\/a>from a grand jury in Washington in the immediate aftermath of the incident, and instead charged Dunn with a federal misdemeanor assault charge for allegedly assaulting, resisting, opposing, impeding, intimidating and interfering with a federal officer.<\/p>\n After his arrest, Dunn was fired from his job<\/a> as a paralegal in the Justice Department. According to a Justice Department source, Dunn worked at the Office of International Affairs within the department’s Criminal Division as a paralegal.<\/p>\n