Former justice department employee’s lawyers argued it was a ‘harmless gesture’ during an act of protest

A former Department of Justice employee who threw a sandwich at a federal agent during Donald Trump’s law enforcement surge in Washington DC was found not guilty of assault by a DC jury on Thursday in the latest legal rebuke of the federal intervention.

Sean Charles Dunn, a former justice department paralegal, became a symbol of the resistance to Trump’s occupation in the nation’s capital when video of him, clad in a pink polo shirt and shorts, throwing a sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agent, wearing a bulletproof vest, went viral.