![\"FBI](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/ctc-l-Sean-Charles-Dunn-getty-01.jpg\")
FBI and Border Patrol officers speak with Sean Charles Dunn after he allegedly assaulted law enforcement with a sandwich on Aug. 10, 2025, in Washington. (Andrew Leyden\/Getty).<\/p>\nFor decades, I have been hearing the old courtroom saying about how a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich if given the chance, but I never expected to see it happen.<\/p>\n
What the saying conveys is that grand juries, which approve or reject charges to go to trial, only hear from one side, the prosecution, and only have to find probable cause to believe a crime happened, which is a very low fence for any prosecutor to get over.<\/p>\n
But leave it to the Justice Department of President Donald Trump to fail at that elementary first step and then to try to charge the ham sandwich on a lesser offense and finally to fail at trial to make even that charge stick.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s what culminated last week in the trial not of a sandwich but rather of a man who threw one at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent patrolling the streets of Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n
According to the charging documents and video of the incident, Sean Charles Dunn, 37, came upon the group of federal agents, cursed at them and called them \u201cfascist\u201d before heaving the sandwich into the ballistic vest of CBP Agent Gregory Lairmore.<\/p>\n
Dunn, like many residents of the nation\u2019s capital, was upset by the surge of federal agents and National Guard soldiers into the city to do the work that normally falls to beat cops.<\/p>\n
After leading federal agents on a merry chase down the street, Dunn was apprehended and charged with something like assault by hoagie. A federal grand jury rejected a felony charge in August, so the office of U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro had to settle for a misdemeanor charge.<\/p>\n
The case of \u201cthe sandwich guy\u201d went viral and became a stunning example in many minds of how the Trump administration\u2019s supposedly serious immigration crackdown, now in its third month, has run amok.<\/p>\n
Dunn was fired from his job as a paralegal at the Justice Department, which is a tough break, although he did gain minor hero status among Americans fed up by the lawlessness and arrogance of the Trump administration in turning pleasant neighborhoods into scenes of a police state.<\/p>\n
FBI and Border Patrol officers speak with Sean Charles Dunn after he allegedly assaulted law enforcement with a sandwich on Aug. 10, 2025, in Washington. (Andrew Leyden\/Getty).<\/p>\n
Among other signs of public outrage, street art appeared drawn in the style of the guerilla artist Banksy of a masked youth heaving a sandwich instead of a Molotov cocktail.<\/p>\n
In the trial itself, it was revealed that Lairmore could barely feel the impact through his tactical vest and that the greatest injury he suffered was the smell of onions and mustard. And the ridicule of his CBP partners. The jury voted to acquit.<\/p>\n
Like many Americans, I\u2019m amused by the episode, but not because I don\u2019t like cops or don\u2019t care about law and order. Quite the opposite. I am appalled by the harm Trump and his Justice Department are doing to law and order in this country.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, despite his administration\u2019s promise to go after the \u201cworst of the worst\u201d offenders, Trump\u2019s policies to tighten immigration enforcement appear to have done more to create disorder, divide families and frighten small children than make any of us feel safer.<\/p>\n
Some of the worst examples have come from, of all people, Border Patrol Cmdr. Greg Bovino, the official tasked with leading the Chicago crackdown.<\/p>\n
He admitted last week to a very serious offense, lying about a rock-throwing incident<\/a> used to justify deploying tear gas against protesters. U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis issued a sweeping injunction<\/a> limiting the use of force during immigration arrests and protests.<\/p>\n For example, video showed him throwing a gas canister at protesters in Chicago\u2019s Little Village neighborhood without giving so much as a \u201clook out below,\u201d despite the judge\u2019s earlier temporary restraining order<\/a> limiting the use of force.<\/p>\n Stories like these remind me of how Trump recently suggested using our cities, which he specified as \u201cDemocrat-run cities,\u201d to train our military troops. Train them to do what? Create disorder?<\/p>\n Americans see what Trump is doing, and they don\u2019t like it. Trump may not want to believe it, but that\u2019s what voters told him in Tuesday\u2019s elections.<\/p>\n Email Clarence Page at cptimee@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n Sign up to receive Clarence Page\u2019s column in your inbox each week.<\/a><\/p>\n Submit a letter<\/a>, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For decades, I have been hearing the old courtroom saying about how a grand jury would indict a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":366763,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[960,177356,8541,11890,5386,1818,2765,1269],"class_list":{"0":"post-366762","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago","8":"tag-chicago","9":"tag-clarence-page","10":"tag-columnists","11":"tag-commentary","12":"tag-il","13":"tag-illinois","14":"tag-keywee","15":"tag-opinion"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115519559822410748","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366762\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}