Sean Dunn walked out of federal court on Thursday a free man, relieved that he no longer faced potential jail time for an incident that made him an unlikely symbol of protest. The 37-year-old Air Force veteran, better known as the D.C. "Sandwich Guy," was found not guilty by a jury of assaulting a U.S. Border Patrol agent with a Subway sandwich.
The Viral Moment That Changed Everything
Dunn's life took an unexpected turn when he shouted "fascist" and "shame" at a group of federal agents before bouncing a Subway footlong off the chest of Gregory Lairmore, a Border Patrol division chief. The incident occurred at 11 p.m. on a Sunday in Washington D.C.'s U Street NW nightlife corridor, near an LGBTQ+ club hosting a Latin night.
Phone footage of the encounter quickly went viral on social media while Dunn was being held at a Metropolitan Police Department station. He was arraigned in Superior Court the following day before being released and returning to his apartment. Then the situation escalated dramatically.
The Dramatic Rearrest and Political Fallout
On Wednesday night, a squadron of federal agents descended on Dunn's apartment building. "I knew they might be coming," Dunn recalled. "I had talked with my lawyer and she was going to arrange for me to surrender myself. But it was getting late, we hadn't heard back, and I was worried they might be coming."
Dunn said he told the agents through the closed door that he wanted to call his attorney, but they didn't let him. "The door opened and they had rifles drawn, pointed at me, with riot shields," he described. "They had gotten a key from the building manager, so they didn't actually break down the door. It was frightening when it was occurring. And of course I didn't resist."
The White House then posted a slickly produced promotional video of Dunn's re-arrest on social media, presumably funded by taxpayer dollars. Pam Bondi, President Donald Trump's attorney general, issued a gleeful statement saying Dunn was charged with felony assault of a federal agent, which carried up to eight years in prison. She also revealed he'd been fired from his job as a Justice Department paralegal, calling Dunn "an example of the Deep State we have been up against."
The Trial and Unexpected Celebrity
Without a job, Dunn couldn't afford to pay a high-priced attorney out of pocket. He relied on his public defender, Sabrina Shroff, and the pro bono help of Julia Gatto and Nicholas Silverman, attorneys at the big law firm Steptoe. Because he was fired for cause, Dunn has not been receiving unemployment benefits, leading friends to launch a GoFundMe campaign on his behalf.
Jeanine Pirro, Trump's U.S. Attorney for D.C., downgraded the charge to a misdemeanor after a grand jury declined to return an indictment on the felony. But prosecutors kept Dunn's case in federal court, and the possibility of up to a year in prison still loomed over him.
The trial featured some absurd moments, including testimony from Lairmore, a federal agent for 23 years, who stated the sandwich "kind of exploded" upon impact and that he felt it through his ballistic vest. He couldn't identify what kind of sandwich it was but maintained he "could smell the onions and mustard." The defense team showed a photo in which the offending sandwich appeared to be largely intact in its Subway wrapper, creating an apparent contradiction that Shroff highlighted in her closing argument.
Personal Costs and Moving Forward
Despite his acquittal, the ordeal has come at a steep personal cost for the soft-spoken veteran who describes himself as a private person. Dunn had hoped to retire from the federal government with a good pension, having accrued three years with the U.S. Forest Service, nearly another three at the Justice Department, and five years in the Air Force that included a deployment to Kandahar, Afghanistan from July 2010 to January 2011.
"It makes my future very uncertain," Dunn said. "I had a total of more than 10 years of federal service, so I was expecting to someday retire from federal service. And to suddenly have that all taken away, I'm still processing it and navigating. I need to find a job."
While Dunn appreciates that his moment of comical defiance inspired people and gave progressives a lift during tense political times, he remains uncomfortable with the "hero" narrative. "The artwork, the memes – I'm glad that I could inspire people," Dunn told HuffPost in his first interview following his acquittal. "I'm not comfortable with the 'hero' narrative. And it's been... honestly, it's been uncomfortable for me. All the attention has made me uncomfortable."
After the verdict, Dunn gave a statement to the press, went home to his apartment and called his mother, his aunt and an old supervisor who'd been following the case. Though he's ready to move on, one question that was never resolved during the trial has finally been answered: the sandwich was turkey, and yes, it came with onions and mustard.
