A Tennessee man who was held in jail for more than a month for posting an anti-Trump meme on Facebook is now, once again, a free man.
Larry Bushart, 61, of Lexington, Tenn., had been in custody since the early-morning hours of Sept. 22, on a charge of “threatening mass violence at a school,” after posting a meme in a Facebook group on a thread referencing a local Charlie Kirk vigil with a photo of Donald Trump and a quote from the president saying “We have to get over it.”
The quote was attributed, accurately, to “Donald Trump on the Perry High School mass shooting one day after,” and Bushart had added the message, “Seems relevant today.”
Hours later, officers showed up at Bushart’s front door with an arrest warrant from Perry County, Tenn., a 45-minute drive from Lexington, Tenn.
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Bushart, a retired police and corrections officer and sheriff’s deputy, had been in jail since he was booked in the early-morning hours of Sept. 22 on a charge of “threatening mass violence at a school,” held on a preposterous $2 million bond.
The Page County sheriff, Nick Weems, confirmed Wednesday the charge against Bushart had been dropped, a day after a local TV interview Weems in which he admitted that investigators knew that the meme was not about Perry County High School.
Weems had previously claimed that Bushart posted the meme “to indicate or make the audience think it was referencing our Perry High School,” which, the sheriff claimed, led “teachers, parents and students to conclude he was talking about a hypothetical shooting at our school. Numerous reached out in concern.”
An investigation by The Intercept didn’t come up with any evidence that even a single person “reached out in concern,” with that outlet reporting that “attorneys with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression filed a series of open records requests with the school district asking for any communications to or from staff pertaining to the case – including terms like ‘shooting,’ ‘threat,’ and ‘meme.’
In response, the director of schools wrote that there were no records related to Bushart’s case.
‘The Perry County Sheriff’s Department handled this situation,’ he wrote.
‘You would think that if a school district or a school was the target of a serious threat, they would have an email or a text message or something to students, to parents, to the safety officer, to the community, saying, Here’s what has happened. Don’t worry. Everything is all right,’ said Adam Steinbaugh, an attorney with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, who has been monitoring the case.
‘They have nothing.’
A local TV station in Tennessee reported that Bushart lost his job in medical transport during his time in jail.
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Chris Graham
