The prosecution of a retired law enforcement officer who spent more than a month in a Tennessee jail after posting a meme quoting President Trump has been dropped. Larry Bushart was arrested in September and booked into Perry County Jail after sharing a meme in a Facebook thread about political activist Charlie Kirk's killing that referenced Trump's comments after a mass shooting at Perry High School in Iowa earlier this year. Bushart then was arrested and hit with felony charges of threatening mass violence at a school, WKRN reports. Bushart lives in Lexington, around 45 minutes away from Perry County.
The meme, originally created by the gun safety group Everytown, paired the words, "We have to get over it," with a photo of Trump. Trump had made the remarks after two people were killed at the Iowa school. "This seems relevant today," Bushart added to the post, per the New York Times. The sheriff in Tennessee's Perry County said some people took the post as a threat to Perry County High School and called his office. Nick Weems conceded in an interview with WTVF that there was no threat in Bushart's comments and that the meme had been on the internet for some time in reference to the Iowa shooting. "We knew," Weems said. "The public did not know."
The sheriff said Bushart was arrested after declining to take the post down. The district attorney, who later dropped the charges, and a judicial commissioner endorsed the arrest, Weems said. Four officers went to Bushart's house after 11pm with the arrest warrant, per the Intercept. Weems also had posted about Kirk's death in September—an ominous warning. "Evil could be your neighbor," the sheriff wrote. "Evil could be standing right beside you in the grocery store. It could be your own family member and you never even know it."
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
