A retired Tennessee law enforcement officer was held in jail for more than a month this fall after police arrested him over a Facebook post of a meme related to the September assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Prosecutors eventually dropped the criminal charge brought against Larry Bushart, but his stint behind bars came to exemplify the country’s tense political and legal climate following the tragedy, when conservatives sought to stymie public discourse about the late controversial figure that it saw as objectionable.
Now, Bushart is suing over his incarceration.
This is such an egregious violation of his rights that he should sue for millions because he’ll get it.
The former police officer shared a meme on Facebook about a vigil being held in Tennessee for Kirk.
“This seems relevant today,” read the meme, which included a photo of Trump and a quote the then-candidate made in 2024 following a shooting at Perry High School in Des Moines, Iowa.
“We have to get over it,” Trump is quoted as saying in the meme.
Four officers came to Bushart’s home the next day, arrested him and took him to jail for “threatening mass violence at a school.” Authorities at the time said that the post was understood locally to be a threat to an area school that has a similar name to the one where the 2024 shooting occurred, according to court records.
“When Mr. Bushart posted the meme, he had no inkling or reason to think that anyone would take it as a threat of violence. And unsurprisingly, defendants … have produced no evidence that any person interpreted the meme as a threat,” the lawsuit states. “In fact, the Perry County School District has no records at all concerning Mr. Bushart or the meme.”
And there are people in this country who may still see nothing wrong with this, because it involves their dear blameless president.
And this guy was a retired cop. Nobody is safe.
Meanwhile, republican politicians get away with saying the most vile shit about people with mental illnesses, minorities, the poor and women, as usual. The hypocritical circus is never ending.
Thought you said people?
/s
Too bad he was retired otherwise he would’ve only been suspended for a month with full pay. /s I hope he gets a shitload of money for being subject to the thought police hypocrisy.
This is the way.
If fucking Nazis are still permitted to go on marches (and that’s the typical case discussed) then someone sure as FUCK can say whatever they want about some asshat like Kirk passing away…
(From the article)
This is the image they jailed him for.
This should be a slam dunk win for him. Blatant political retribution. The people who jailed him should be jailed, disbarred, fined, etc., the citizens shouldn’t have to pay the court award for their fascism.
Are you fucking kidding me? He simply quoted Trump and got jail time? What a fucking joke.
Thou shall not offend the Dear Leader!
May I say thanks for the pixelation. I’m serious, it’s tiring looking at his ugly clueless face all the time.
It’s amazing how expressive that face is, simultaneously conveying limitless malice and stupidity. The face of a child rapist? It’s believable.
Even Bob Gale, who had access to a real time machine when penning Back to the Future 2, had to dial back how Biff Tannen represented Trump to get a PG rating. Meanwhile a documentary about our sitting president that only tells objective facts could potentially get an NC-17. Guess that’s why the voting age is 18.
He is like a living testament to the Roald Dahl aphorism about thinking evil thoughts making you look evil.
somebody’ll come by and removed about censorship in 3…2…
alexandria ocasio-cortez looks a bit better than trump. seriously!
Are you some kind of spam account? Seriously?
i actually have autism which is why i type like that. seriously!
Turns out being a cop doesn’t protect you from the regime.
Wish all the law enforcement officers who voted for a convicted felon and adjudicated rapist realized that before voting for a convicted felon and adjudicated rapist.
Cops often grew up under similar circumstances to many people who joined gangs. Being a cop is just being part of the biggest most untouchable gang of them all.
Most PDs are the biggest criminal organization in their city.
Well, let’s be real, BANKERS are the biggest most untouchable gang!
Yeah, but cops utilize actual physical violence. They are thugs.
Yup I hear they’re as untouchable as health insurance ceo’s. Hmm I guess when I think about most powerful people are.
Kirk hasn’t said anything racist in a while.
Now that the emotion has died down and I can look at Charlie Kirk’s assassination as a whole and what came of it, i can confidently say that the world feels slightly better without Charlie Kirk in it. I don’t mourn him.
I said it from the start and stand by it: however you feel about political assassination aside, Kirk was one of the only right-wing media figures who had a chance of keeping Trump’s political capital alive, as in, he was one of the few people with the charisma and messaging skill that he could charm MAGA’s into shifting tone to follow his lead.
Who else is going to hold onto a segment of America who are violently stupid, armed, patriotic, and have the attention spans of gnats and each think themselves to be some kind of comic book hero? Trump was able to capture them because he seemed genuine even though it was genuine hate and anger. Kirk could have kept the hate and anger alive under a skin of righteousness and Christian ideology that would have absolutely caught on in midwest America like fire through dry brush if the GOP decided to go whole-hog and fund him in the coming years.
We averted a massive problem with Kirk, and the way everyone around him is currently grasping for shreds of that political capital as it evaporates into the wind just further reinforces what I believe.
Who else is going to hold onto a segment of America
You left out aggressively ignorant.
Looks like we found a cure for racism
He quoted Trump saying ‘We need to just get over it’ about the Perry High School shooting in Iowa.
What he said wasn’t even hateful, it was a fucking quote.
Well, it was from Trump, so it was a pretty hateful quote, to be fair
The same guy who said Rob Reiner “died due to TDS”?
Its OK when Chavez he president does it
Fair point
And not even close to encouraging breaking the law. I’ve heard politicians have essentially the same “let’s move on” attitude about school shootings.
Some politicians wear AR-15 pins. I wish I was joking.
Just because we’re leftists doesn’t mean we have to be AK fanboys. AR-15s are good rifles too.
All Kimmel did was play clips of trump.
This news story existing a decade ago would have broke the minds of most Americans. Even those that support Trump now. It’s amazing how the slow trickle of Fascism is normalized in society.
I got in trouble with Facebook once for quoting Trump’s thing about how he could shoot someone without losing supporters. If it isn’t appropriate to say on Facebook, it isn’t appropriate to say in a presidential campaign!
I created a Facebook page called “Fled Cruz”, the profile picture was Rafael “Ted” Cruz and the only thing I posted was quotes of his tweets, Facebook shut it down for hate speech. They denied the appeal and deleted the entire page.
Fuck the Zuck
I never thought I’d side with a retired Tennessee cop, but here I am
It’s been a rough year
As he should, absolutely his first amendment right was violated.
If the right can spout pure hatred and bullshit with impunity, so can everyone else.
He is the right wing. It was a meme of hate supporting kirk.
He isn’t, it wasn’t, and you’re an asshole.
It was a picture of Trump with a quote that he had said about a school shooting saying “We have to get over it”. This guy also added “This Seems Relevant”
Perfect username lol.
No.
Let’s not use the opinionated word “tragedy.”
The US has lost their license to roast us (the rest of the world) for saying mean things on the internet and getting a vist from the police. Welcome to the club you fat removed.
I assure you the United States has both people who will continue to try making that roast, and people who never felt like they had that freedom in the first place.
I don’t know what planet you live on but it’s the rest of the world roasting the US.
Free speech was always an Americans roasting the rest of the world thing I’m not sure how you can deny that. We must live on different planets. It has only recently become reversed recently with trump being a dictator.
Free speech was always an Americans roasting the rest of the world thing I’m not sure how you can deny that.
What does that even mean? We’re not the only country with concepts of free speech. The Enlightenment happened in Europe and some of those ideas are there as well and they can and do use it to roast the US.
Grammatically, I don’t know what “always an Americans” means. I’m not sure if you know how to use punctuation.
It has only recently become reversed recently with trump being a dictator.
Completely wrong. The US has been criticized before and generally rightly so. Although in your case, it seems to be based more on ignorance and bigotry than anything.
Its not that serious. This is not an actual analysis on free speech. I am not saying Americans are the only ones with free speech god dam. Its just a joke about a common online joke.
At least he is American and can sue. Some immigrants were deported and had their lives destroyed just because they had their opinions
…
Then they came for the retired law enforcement
…
And I said nothing because ACAB
Okay, that’s pretty funny.
I do wonder, if the roles were reversed, would he have refused orders to make the arrest?
No, the answer is no, he would not have refused orders
ACAB
This dude literally kept his chin up and went to jail after multiple threats. I’m not ignorant about more than a couple bad apples. I understand the implicit complicity of by standing quietly. I don’t need the lectures, so let’s focus and not whatabout. This single person, is not a bastard. Say what you will, but bastards equals no greater than all minus one, bc this dude. Wrong fucking thread.
‘A couple bad apples’ isn’t an excuse for bad cops, that’s the complete opposite of what the phrase means.
It’s “one bad apple spoils the whole bunch”. It works like that for literal apples and for cops too. Even if a cop doesn’t go around crushing necks with his knees, if he’s willing to tolerate the bad cops that do that makes him a bad cop too.
Good cops don’t survive to retirement. This particular guy is completely right in this situation, but ACAB is still true
ACAB is saying that a system creates bad people; it takes what could have been good and morphs them due to corruption and inherent injustice.
No matter how good the dude, if they follow through on evil orders, they’ve committed an evil act. And you can’t tell me that this (otherwise good and moral dude) didn’t follow don’t evil orders at some point
I guarantee that as a cop, he committed some terrible shit acts that would make you sad. In the name of the law. And therefore, ACAB.
You do?
