Given my work representing clients who’ve been investigated, prosecuted and imprisoned for blowing the whistle on government wrongdoing, I’ve seen government excess at its worst. That includes abuses such as torture, secret mass surveillance, civilian drone strikes and war crimes.
However, the government’s latest overreach — bringing a federal felony assault charge against Sean Dunn for throwing a submarine sandwich at an immigration enforcement agent in Washington, D.C. — is beyond the pale. It makes the broken windows policing of the 1990s look like a picnic in the park. And if you think this is an isolated incident, look no further than U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro’s new order to ramp up criminal charges on street arrests arising from President Donald Trump’s takeover of law enforcement in the nation’s capital. Elevating the sandwich stunt into a federal crime belies Trump’s pretext for federalization, namely that the city is a hellscape of “crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse.”
In case anyone missed the viral video that has made him something of a folk hero to many in D.C. and around the country, Dunn loudly excoriated a small group of U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officers who were part of the takeover and threw an unopened sandwich at one of them. Ordinarily, this might result in a warning, or at most a misdemeanor charge for disturbing the peace. However, these are not ordinary times. Dunn is the latest example of Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi weaponizing the Justice Department while — with classic projection — accusing Democrats of doing precisely that.
Trump’s latest move is even more egregious, because the politicization [of the Justice Department] is occurring on the back of a decorated Air Force veteran who has dedicated his life to military and government service.
Trump’s politicization of the Justice Department includes, but is certainly far more expansive than, pardons of Jan. 6 convicts, firing senior prosecutors and FBI agents who worked on successful cases against him, opening criminal probes of perceived enemies and intervening in state prosecutions for pro-Trump 2020 election tampering. However, Trump’s latest move is even more egregious, because the politicization is occurring on the back of a decorated Air Force veteran who has dedicated his life to military and government service.
It’s public knowledge that Dunn, 37, worked in the Justice Department’s criminal division Office of International Affairs. It’s also been reported that Bondi promptly fired him, issuing a Trumpian statement in boldface, italics, all caps, different font sizes and various colors:
I just learned that this defendant worked at the Department of Justice — NO LONGER. Not only is he FIRED, he has been charged with a felony. This is an example of the Deep State we have been up against for seven months as we work to refocus [the] DOJ. You will NOT work in this administration while disrespecting our government and law enforcement.
(Confusing government employment with government loyalty is an unfortunate Bondi trait about which I’ve written previously.)
What people don’t know about Dunn is his connection to other prominent Air Force veterans who have blown the whistle on government abuses. In 2014, he interviewed my client Brandon Bryant when Dunn worked at New Europe Studios, which provided video content for The New European, a weekly newspaper based in Britain that has since changed its name to The New World. Even more significantly, Dunn is one of my client Cian Westmoreland’s closest friends. Bryant and Westmoreland were among the first whistleblowers to disclose disturbing and legally questionable aspects of the United States’ nascent drone assassination program.
(Courtesy of the author) Air Force veterans Sean Dunn (L) and Cian Westmoreland (R)
Westmoreland served in Korea and Germany with Dunn. They worked on the same C4ISR (command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) systems integral to drone warfare. Drone teams generally work closely during lengthy shifts of focused concentration, heightened vigilance and sustained surveillance of often innocuous terrain — interspersed with intense moments of target identification, weapon delivery and exposure to high-definition combat-related imagery. In the words of another client: “You literally just kind of hover and you wait till he walks out to the field to meet with some friends for something and you blow him up. Drop a Hellfire missile on him. Maybe we killed our objective, maybe we killed who we thought was our objective. I don’t know.”
After years of controversy, the Department of Veterans Affairs and clinical research now recognize that military personnel and veterans involved in remote killing suffer from the same post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms that affect those who served in manned aircraft and as boots-on-the-ground personnel. PTSD is a mental health condition caused by being part of, or witnessing, an extremely stressful or terrifying event. That’s what drone sensor operators, imagery analysts and technicians did on a day in and day out basis. I’ve seen their PTSD first-hand while representing them in government investigations and prosecutions for speaking publicly about issues like overbroad targeting, inaccurate strikes and under-reported civilian deaths.
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Westmoreland dealt with his PTSD by speaking out. Dunn didn’t take that path. On one of the rare occasions when he spoke publicly about his own experience, he said:
[F]or me personally, a lot of times when I talk to not only Americans, but especially in the US, about having been in the military…we have this sort of strange reverence for veterans in the US, and when you challenge the political structure or the social order, a lot of people, they don’t know how to feel about it because we were somebody who was supposed to be representing all that’s good and suddenly they’re seeing the truth.
Other than this remark, Dunn appears to have channeled his concerns toward working within the federal government.
That’s why the sandwich slinging seems so out of character. PTSD, however, would certainly help explain how Trump’s federalizing D.C.’s local police and calling in the National Guard could trigger someone like Dunn, who has dedicated his entire adult life to defending Americans, upholding the rule of law and keeping the country safe.
While Dunn’s experience has launched an avalanche of internet memes, nicknames like the “Hoagie Hero,” and jokes about “assault with a deli weapon,” we should bear in mind some insights from those who actually know him. Westmoreland offered this:
You really think Sean should get 8 years for throwing a sandwich?…To me, that’s absurd. All those motherf***ers who are out there arresting U.S. citizens, violating habeas corpus and bending rules to enforce a police state deserve a lot more than a sandwich dumped on them. They are violating the constitutional rights of many innocent people. Y’all b***h about Freedom and you vote for the Gestapo. Those people are selling out the integrity of this country for a paycheck. Most of America knows it.
While the judge at Dunn’s initial appearance found the felony charge excessive, I can only hope the government will drop the charge altogether.
It would also benefit the government to take a close, searching look at why so many Air Force veterans — from Thomas Drake to Reality Winner to Daniel Hale — have faced termination and prison because their conscience and moral courage demanded they protest this country’s military overreach. Their ordeals vividly illustrate why Dunn’s throwing a sandwich at a federal agent is perhaps one of the most human responses we’ve seen so far to the unprecedented and unlawful brazen attempt to take over aspects of the fiercely independent Washington, D.C., while signaling that other liberal cities are next.
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