DC's Hoagie Hero is a decorated veteran. Trump & Co. don't care

DC’s Hoagie Hero is a decorated veteran. Trump & Co. don’t care
Sean Dunn fought fascism with a Subway sandwich — and there's more to his story

By Jesselyn Radack
Contributing Writer
Published August 21, 2025 9:00AM (EDT)


(Salon) Given my work representing clients who’ve been investigated, prosecuted and imprisoned for blowing the whistle on government wrongdoing, I’ve seen government excess at its worst. That includes abuses such as torture, secret mass surveillance, civilian drone strikes and war crimes.

However, the government’s latest overreach — bringing a federal felony assault charge against Sean Dunn for throwing a submarine sandwich at an immigration enforcement agent in Washington, D.C. — is beyond the pale. It makes the broken windows policing of the 1990s look like a picnic in the park. And if you think this is an isolated incident, look no further than U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro’s new order to ramp up criminal charges on street arrests arising from President Donald Trump’s takeover of law enforcement in the nation’s capital. Elevating the sandwich stunt into a federal crime belies Trump’s pretext for federalization, namely that the city is a hellscape of “crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse.”

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Trump’s politicization of the Justice Department includes, but is certainly far more expansive than, pardons of Jan. 6 convicts, firing senior prosecutors and FBI agents who worked on successful cases against him, opening criminal probes of perceived enemies and intervening in state prosecutions for pro-Trump 2020 election tampering. However, Trump’s latest move is even more egregious, because the politicization is occurring on the back of a decorated Air Force veteran who has dedicated his life to military and government service.

It’s public knowledge that Dunn, 37, worked in the Justice Department’s criminal division Office of International Affairs. It’s also been reported that Bondi promptly fired him, issuing a Trumpian statement in boldface, italics, all caps, different font sizes and various colors:



(Confusing government employment with government loyalty is an unfortunate Bondi trait about which I’ve written previously.)

What people don’t know about Dunn is his connection to other prominent Air Force veterans who have blown the whistle on government abuses. In 2014, he interviewed my client Brandon Bryant when Dunn worked at New Europe Studios, which provided video content for The New European, a weekly newspaper based in Britain that has since changed its name to The New World. Even more significantly, Dunn is one of my client Cian Westmoreland’s closest friends. Bryant and Westmoreland were among the first whistleblowers to disclose disturbing and legally questionable aspects of the United States’ nascent drone assassination program. ..................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/08/21/dcs-hoagie-hero-is-a-decorated-veteran-trump-co-dont-care/