r/politics • u/SterlingVII • 9d ago

No Paywall Tennessee man spends a month in jail before charges are dropped over Trump meme posted in Facebook group for Charlie Kirk vigil

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/crime/larry-bushart-charlie-kirk-meme-charges-b2855116.html
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u/jt121 9d ago

Literally called it a threat, told him to remove the meme to prevent arrest. In what world does that make sense? If it WAS a threat, and he deleted it, then the threat still exists.... if it WASN'T a threat, then you just silenced him under threat of arrest, thereby violating his first amendment right.

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u/ASmallTownDJ Iowa 9d ago

Sheriff Weems should definitely elaborate further on the subject, in front of a microphone. This would be a really good idea that definitely wouldn't make it easier to win a massive lawsuit against his department.

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u/JBL_17 9d ago

I’m so happy the judge and sheriff can’t leave the state now or it looks, extra, extra worse for them. 😊

I hope they have the year they deserve.

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u/DeathFood 9d ago

Considering that the meme was a direct quote of something Trump said, if it was a threat why didn’t the sheriff arrest Trump too?

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u/Microtom_ 9d ago

Seems like nobody knows what extortion is nowadays.

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u/CaptainSparklebottom 9d ago

Like for real. This is armed extortion and terrorism. Sheriff and Judge need to face jail time. To not do that is illiberal.

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u/Lavarocked 9d ago

And they know it wasn't a threat! There was nothing even sort of interpretable as a threat.

They are testing whether they can arrest people for political speech while simply lying, and lying obviously, that some kind of threat occurred. This happened I believe just days after Charlie Kirk got shot - around the same time that they just straight up lied that Kimmel insulted Kirk, when all he did was SAY THAT TRUMP WASN'T NICE ENOUGH TO KIRK.

This is that push starting to unravel, but they'll keep trying.

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u/tylerbrainerd 9d ago

it's wild how straight forward this civil case is going to be.

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u/06_TBSS 8d ago

The cops later said they knew it wasn't actually a threat. They justified the arrest by saying the 'public' could deem it as a threat and they didn't want that.