A retired Tennessee policeman who spent more than a month in jail over an anti-Trump Facebook post is suing the authorities responsible for his arrest.
Attorneys for Larry Bushart, 61, filed a lawsuit in federal court Wednesday against a sheriff, an investigator and other local authorities of Perry County, which lies about halfway between Nashville and Memphis. The suit alleges that they violated Bushart’s First and Fourth Amendment rights when they ordered his arrest in September and held him for five weeks on charges of threatening mass violence — all in response to what Bushart contends was a harmless social media meme.
“In America, we do not jail people for political speech,” the lawsuit states. “Yet Larry Bushart spent 37 days behind bars simply for speaking his mind. It took a national uproar about his detention for Perry County officials to drop the charge against Mr. Bushart — a charge officials knew from the outset was unfounded.”
The lawsuit is Bushart’s bid to turn the tables on local authorities in a deep-red corner of rural Tennessee, where his prolific anti-Trump Facebook posting had annoyed some neighbors and amused others — until the day officers showed up at his house. He joins a growing number of liberal activists around the country who are pushing back on what they view as an overzealous crackdown on speech in the wake of the September killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Perry County Sheriff Nick Weems, who ordered Bushart’s arrest, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.
Law enforcement officers knocked on Bushart’s door on Sept. 21 because Perry investigators were interested in one of the more than 100 posts he had published that day.
In a local Facebook group, Bushart had commented on a post about a planned local vigil for Kirk, the charismatic organizer who helped lead a conservative youth movement on American campuses. Bushart replied with a preexisting meme that depicted Trump and quoted a remark Trump had made — “We have to get over it” — after a deadly January 2024 shooting at Perry High School in Iowa.
Bushart captioned the post, “This seems relevant today ….”
Weems said some people in Perry County, Tennessee, interpreted the meme as a threat to their local high school, which is named “Perry County High School.” He told Nashville’s NewsChannel 5 that “multiple people” had complained but did not specify how many.
When asked if he and his deputies knew that Trump’s quote was referring to a past shooting at a different high school in another state, Weems told the station: “Yes, we knew, but the public did not know.”
Bushart’s post and arrest came at a time when liberals around the country were facing real-world consequences for online posts critical of Kirk in the wake of his stunning public death. Dozens of people were suspended or fired from their jobs, including late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel, whose show was temporarily suspended by ABC and parent company Disney amid pressure from Trump administration officials.
Bushart lost employment too, according to the lawsuit. After a 34-year career in law enforcement, he was working a postretirement job in medical transportation but lost it due to his 37-day incarceration, the suit says.
“I spent over three decades in law enforcement, and have the utmost respect for the law,” Bushart said Wednesday in a statement provided by attorneys from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which is representing him. “But I also know my rights, and I was arrested for nothing more than refusing to be bullied into censorship.”
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