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The White House produced as propaganda-style video of Sean Dunn's second arrest.
It was the second time federal officials arrested him for the breaded assault.
The White House is facing questions after releasing a dramatic, highly produced video of a SWAT-style raid to re-arrest a former Justice Department employee accused of throwing a Subway sandwich at a federal officer, even though he had already been apprehended and released days earlier.
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It looked less like an arrest and more like a state-produced movie trailer.
On Thursday, the White House posted a professionally edited, multi-camera video titled “Nighttime Routine: Operation Make D.C. Safe Again Edition” showing heavily armed law enforcement officers converging on a West End apartment building in Washington, D.C. The target: Sean Charles Dunn, a 37-year-old former Justice Department international affairs specialist charged this week with felony assault for allegedly throwing a wrapped sandwich at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer during a late-night federal deployment in the city’s U Street corridor on Sunday. The incident was caught on video and went viral after it was posted online.
Related: Trump’s ‘dictator-like’ D.C. takeover is an assault on democracy, critics warn
The Trump administration’s footage opens with on-screen text, “West End DC, 11:09 p.m.,” showing police cars, FBI agents, and U.S. Marshals converging on a residential neighborhood before cutting to “11:13 p.m.” as officers in helmets, guns drawn, and carrying bulletproof shields file into a narrow corridor inside an apartment building. More than a dozen officers appear in the sequence. The next shot shows a man in handcuffs standing in front of an elevator. By “11:21 p.m.”, the man is escorted into a waiting police car. The video closes on a black screen showing a sketch of the White House and an American flag, with the words: “The White House. President Donald J. Trump.”
Set to dramatic music, the production evokes high tension, as if officers were confronting an armed fugitive. But Dunn was not a fleeing suspect. Court records show he was apprehended within moments of tossing the Subway footlong at the CBP officer on Sunday night and was processed at D.C. Superior Court before being released without charges.
Related: Justice Department lawyer charged & fired after throwing Subway sandwich at federal law enforcement officer
Prosecutors later issued a federal warrant on Wednesday, charging him with forcibly assaulting, resisting, or impeding a federal officer, a felony punishable by up to eight years in prison, though Dunn has no criminal history and would not be eligible for the maximum sentence if convicted. In court Thursday, Dunn’s attorney, Sabrina Shroff, said she had been working to arrange his voluntary surrender when the government instead sent “20 police officers to his home” and did not allow him to call her, The Washington Post reports. “He did absolutely the most responsible thing by trying to surrender,” she said, noting that Dunn is an Air Force veteran.
The Advocate contacted the Department of Justice for comment and to ask what necessitated the heavy-handed second arrest. Nobody from the department responded.
The White House’s cinematic presentation drew comparisons to a March video released by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele when the Trump administration deported Venezuelan migrants, including gay makeup artist Andry Hernandez Romero, to El Salvador’s notorious maximum-security Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT. In that three-minute production, shackled detainees were yanked off planes, herded under klieg lights, shaved, and locked in overcrowded cells, imagery Bukele, a self-described strongman and Trump ally, used to market his prison policies, despite international condemnation of the facility’s inhumane conditions.
In D.C., the Dunn raid took place against the backdrop of an extraordinary federal power grab. On Monday, Trump invoked Section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act to seize control of the Metropolitan Police Department and activate National Guard troops, a move not used in decades. Flanked by Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Trump painted a grim and misleading picture of the capital and told officers confronting protesters they were “allowed to do whatever the hell they want.”
Related: Man accused of throwing a Subway sandwich at border agent in D.C. charged with felony
Local leaders, civil rights advocates, and LGBTQ+ organizations have condemned the move as authoritarian, noting that violent crime in D.C. is at a 30-year low.
For D.C.’s LGBTQ+ residents, the highest per capita in the nation, the surge of federal agents into neighborhoods has raised fears of intimidation and profiling.
Editor's note: This story has been updated to reflect that Dunn is not an attorney.
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