Legal expert Lisa Rubin highlighted for a "Morning Joe" panel on MSNBC Friday the exact moment she thinks the Trump administration lost its case charging the infamous Washington, D.C. "sandwich thrower."
The case, which was watched around the country, concerned a protester, Sean Dunn, who pelted a Border Patrol officer with a Subway sandwich amid Trump's efforts to federalize law enforcement in D.C. And it came after the charges were already downgraded to a misdemeanor after U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro failed to win a felony indictment.
"Lisa, I've just been handed an important fact check," said anchor Jonathan Lemire. "Earlier I said he threw a ham sandwich. I've been corrected. It was a salami sandwich. We regret the error ... So just, I mean, this this case, because it's so preposterous in some ways, did gain a lot of national attention. But what lessons should we learn from it?"
"I think first and foremost, there is such a thing as overcharging, right?" said Rubin. "We always talk about the fact. And here I'm about to make a joke of my own that a grand jury will indict a ham sandwich. But in this case, the U.S. Attorney's office for the district of D.C. under Jeanine Pirro first tried to indict the guy for a felony, and they refused. They returned no true bill. Then they charged him with a misdemeanor. And now we have a jury willing to acquit him."
"And I think part of it here is that the crime with which he was charged necessitated that the jury find that the guy felt that he, the CBP officer here, the Border Patrol officer, would have felt that he was in danger of imminent bodily harm," said Rubin. "And though he testified that he felt the sandwich explode against his bulletproof vest, the greatest thing that the defense lawyer Sabrina Shroff did here was point to a picture of the sandwich on the sidewalk fully intact, at which point the officer had to clarify that yeah, there was some onion on the antenna of his radio, and he could still smell the mustard on him, but the sandwich did not, in fact, explode."
"That's when, you know, you know, that you've gone awry," Rubin then concluded.