A Tennessee man has been in jail for a month, and will be there into December, at least, because a county sheriff 45 minutes away didn’t like a meme he posted on Facebook about Donald Trump.
Seriously, that is the alleged crime here.
Larry Bushart, 61, of Lexington, Tenn., posted a meme in a Facebook group on a thread referencing a local Charlie Kirk vigil with a photo of Trump and a direct quote from the president saying “We have to get over it,” which Trump said after a 2024 school shooting in Perry, Iowa, attributing the quote to “Donald Trump on the Perry High School mass shooting one day after,” and adding 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.
Bushart, a retired police and corrections officer and sheriff’s deputy, has 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,” and is being held on a preposterous $2 million bond.
His lawyers asked a judge to reconsider the absurdly high bond, given the obvious, but prosecutors pushed back by asking for a delay, and the next hearing in the case is not until Dec. 4.
It’s pretty clear that not only will the charges eventually be dropped – and that Bushart will have himself quite the civil case to bring against the Perry County sheriff, Nick Weems – but the millions that he is set to get back from Weems and Perry County taxpayers won’t give him back the 10 weeks he’ll have had to spend in jail because a Trump-deranged county sheriff didn’t like what he posted on Facebook.
Weems, who was first elected in 2015, and is now in his third term as the sheriff in Perry County, claims that Bushart posted the meme “to indicate or make the audience think it was referencing our Perry High School,” which, the sheriff claims, led “teachers, parents and students to conclude he was talking about a hypothetical shooting at our school. Numerous reached out in concern.”
Thing is, an investigation by The Intercept didn’t come up with any evidence that even a single person “reached out in concern.”
The Intercept reported that:
“(A)ttorneys 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.’
Nothing.
Well, not nothing.
Locals haven’t taken too kindly to having this done in their name.
“A man is in jail because the sheriff didn’t use google,” was one comment on the Facebook page of a Perry County radio station reporting on the arrest.
“(Y)our department arrested a man for expressing free speech because you listened to public hysteria rather than doing an investigation?” another weighed in, with a third dismissing the idea that there was “hysteria” over the post.
“Mass hysteria is a lie,” another man wrote. “I hope he sues you.”
Oh, that you can guarantee.
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Chris Graham
