The misdemeanor trial of a former Justice Department employee accused of throwing a sandwich at a federal agent has become an unlikely test case for the Trump administration’s sweeping crime crackdown in the nation’s capital amid warning signs that Washington juries and judges are increasingly rejecting U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s aggressive charging strategy.
Prosecutors initially sought to charge 37-year-old Sean Charles Dunn with felony assault on a federal officer after the August confrontation. A grand jury refused to indict, forcing the case back to a misdemeanor and allowing prosecutors to bypass the grand jury. Dunn faces up to one year in jail if convicted.
In a pretrial motion, prosecutors acknowledged a “foreseeable” risk that jurors might disregard the government’s theory of the case altogether. They urged U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols to forbid Dunn’s lawyers from telling jurors that a grand jury rejected the felony count or suggesting that politics played a role in the decision to prosecute.
“The Defendant should therefore not be permitted to introduce evidence or make arguments related
to the procedural history of the case since such evidence or arguments would only serve to confuse
the jury or invite nullification,” prosecutors wrote in an Oct. 15 motion. Nichols, an appointee of President Donald Trump, had yet to rule on this motion as the trial entered its third day on Wednesday.
After jurors were impaneled Monday, Nichols said he expected the trial to last no more than two days “because it’s the simplest case in the world.” Video shows Dunn shouting at officers deployed in an Aug. 10 security surge near the U Street nightlife corridor and then tossing what prosecutors call a “salami sub” into the chest of a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent.
Dunn’s attorneys say the case exemplifies government overreach. They point to a 20-agent raid on his apartment, later featured in a White House video, and public comments from Attorney General Pam Bondi calling Dunn part of the “Deep State.” Pirro herself posted a video to X on Aug. 13 saying the administration will “back the police to the hilt,” and gesturing at the defendant to “stick your Subway sandwich somewhere else.”
Assault a law enforcement officer, and you’ll be prosecuted.
This guy thought it was funny—well, he doesn’t think it’s funny today, because we charged him with a felony. pic.twitter.com/O0NVAFDZrU
— Jeanine Pirro (@JudgeJeanine) August 13, 2025
“This is political viewpoint discrimination,” defense attorney Julia Gatto argued this week, saying prosecutors have treated Dunn’s “harmless gesture” more harshly than violent offenders pardoned for the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Prosecutors countered that “no one has a license to assault federal officers,” regardless of motivation.
The stakes extend beyond the fate of one sandwich thrower. Since Trump ordered the federal intervention on Aug. 7, at least eight grand juries weighing six separate cases have refused to indict defendants on felony charges arising from the surge. Prosecutors have also dropped nearly a dozen more cases after judges questioned the evidence or charging decisions, according to court filings and public reports.
Just last month, a jury acquitted D.C. resident Sydney Reid of misdemeanor assault after three grand juries declined to indict her on felony counts involving an FBI agent during a jail-transfer protest. Other defendants, including Paul Bryant and Torez Riley, saw felony charges unravel pre-trial — one because the alleged conduct failed to match video evidence, and another after a magistrate judge called the arrest search “the most illegal” he had ever seen.
On Tuesday, Pirro’s jury problems elevated from the jury box to the bench. Chief Judge James Boasberg ruled in two more surge cases involving Paul Nguyen and Nathalie Rose Jones, each accused of assaultive or threatening conduct during summer protests. Nguyen allegedly charged toward a Homeland Security Investigations officer during a street fight, scraping the officer’s knees, though prosecutors dropped the federal case before indictment after concluding the evidence was too weak to proceed.
Jones was accused of posting online threats to Trump between Aug. 2 and Aug. 16. When a federal grand jury returned a no-bill on felony threat charges, prosecutors dismissed the case and refiled misdemeanor attempted-threat charges in D.C. Superior Court — a move Boasberg said risked improper gamesmanship, according to an 11-page memorandum opinion.
Boasberg dismissed Jones’s case with prejudice, holding that allowing prosecutors to abandon a failed felony case and restart proceedings in another venue could amount to “charging, dismissing without having placed a defendant in jeopardy, and commencing another prosecution at a different time or place deemed more favorable to the prosecution,” conduct Rule 48(a) is meant to prevent.
Dunn’s trial now sits at the intersection of two growing forms of resistance against Trump’s crime crackdown: jurors reluctant to elevate low-level confrontations into federal crimes, and judges skeptical of the tactics used to keep the surge’s numbers alive.
In September, legal experts told the Washington Examiner that the phenomenon of juries refusing to hand back indictments was indeed a rare occurrence, and one that should cause alarm.
PIRRO FACES GRAND JURY PROBLEM AS DC RESIDENTS REFUSE TO INDICT ANTI-TRUMP SUSPECTS
“Maybe it’s not a trend when one grand jury declines, or two. But once you get to three, four, five — this is a pattern,” South Texas College of Law professor Josh Blackman told the Washington Examiner. “These jurors are overwhelmingly liberal. They’re not disputing that the defendants committed the acts — they’re saying they don’t agree with the charges.”
If Dunn is acquitted, it would be the latest in a string of courtroom setbacks tied to the federal initiative Trump has touted as an effort to restore order to the capitol, and an ominous symbol of possible jury nullification, given the facts and circumstances of his alleged sub sandwich assault. A jury verdict could come as early as Wednesday.