A former police officer arrested by Tennessee officials for making a Facebook post about right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s murder will receive $835,000 as part of a wrongful incarceration settlement, CNN reported on Wednesday.
“Under the deal announced Wednesday, Larry Bushart, agreed to drop the five-month-old case alleging that his constitutional rights were violated when officials in Perry County, Tennessee, held him in jail,” said the report, noting that the lawsuit, brought with help from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), had been set to go to trial in two months. “‘I am pleased my First Amendment rights have been vindicated,’ Bushart said in a statement Wednesday. ‘The people’s freedom to participate in civil discourse is crucial to a healthy democracy.’”
Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA and an outspoken champion of far-right and Christian nationalist causes under the Trump administration, was shot and killed by a sniper during a political debate at Utah Valley University last September.
Bushart’s troubles began when he shared a Facebook meme in response to a vigil for Kirk, bearing the caption, “This seems relevant today” and featuring Trump saying of a 2024 school shooting in Iowa, “We have to get over it.”
In response to this, he was arrested by local officers for “threatening mass violence at a school” and held on $2 million bond for 37 days.
County officials dropped the charges after the story made national news, but claim the arrest wasn’t intended to punish his speech, and local police had thought the meme was a genuine threat to target a local school with a similar name to the one in Iowa.
Bushart says his time in jail cost him his post-retirement job and left him with a fear of commenting on politics.
“His lawsuit charged Perry County; Nick Weems, the county’s sheriff; and Jason Morrow, a county investigator involved in the probe into Bushart, with a series of constitutional infringements, including violations of his free speech rights and his Fourth Amendment right against’wrongful arrest, wrongful prosecution, and wrongful incarceration,’” noted the report. “Under the settlement, the county, Weems and Morrow are not admitting any wrongdoing in last year’s ordeal. The county’s insurer will pay the settlement.”
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