loading . . . By the time the cops showed up to arrest him for sharing a derisive meme responding to the killing of Charlie Kirk, Larry Bushart Jr. had posted on Facebook more than 100 times on Sunday alone.
It was past 11 p.m. on September 21, and Bushart, 61, was still up with his wife at their home in Lexington, Tennessee, a small city halfway between Nashville and Memphis. It had been a normal weekend. On Saturday, they went to see a community theater performance of âArsenic and Old Lace.â The next day, they moved furniture to prepare for a new carpet delivery. And, as he did almost every day, Bushart spent hours on his phone, posting on Facebook a torrent of liberal memes.
Born and raised in West Tennessee, Bushart worked as a police officer and sheriffâs deputy for 24 years, then spent another nine with the Tennessee Department of Correction before retiring from law enforcement last year. His politics made him an outlier among his neighbors. Like many people, he reserved his most strident opinions for the internet. On Facebook, Bushart slammed President Donald Trump and his followers, whom he likened to a cult. He quarreled with vaccine skeptics and fought with election deniers. As things took a darker turn during Trumpâs second term, Bushart posted memes decrying the presidentâs increasingly authoritarian moves. After Kirkâs killing on September 10, Bushart posted furiously, repeatedly, about why the right-wing activist did not deserve to be lionized â and warning about the escalating assault on free speech.
His posts were not limited to his own feed. That Saturday morning, in a Facebook group called âWhatâs Happening in Perry County,â Bushart spotted a thread about an upcoming candlelight vigil honoring Kirk in the county seat of Linden, a small town some 45 minutes away. He fired off a rapid series of trollish memes. One showed a scene from âThe Sopranos.â âTony, Charlie Kirk died,â Carmela Soprano says. âWho gives a shit,â Tony replies. Another quoted Kash Patelâs press conference after Kirkâs murder, where he said, âIâll see you at Valhalla,â depicting the FBI director in a Viking costume and holding a rubber chicken. The most vulgar meme appeared to capture the moment Kirk was shot, accompanied by the words, âRelease the Epstein Files.â
But it was a more innocuous post that would soon send Bushartâs life spiraling out of control. It was an image he had previously posted to his own feed to little response: a photo of Trump alongside a quote, âWe have to get over it.â The meme, which had been circulating for more than a year, drew from remarks Trump made after a January 2024 school shooting in Perry, Iowa. Beneath the quote was a line providing context: âDonald Trump, on the Perry High School mass shooting, one day after.â Above the image were the words âSeems relevant today.â
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If Bushart shared the posts to taunt those mourning Kirk, the reactions on the forum remained relatively mild. âJeez Larry, take a stress pill or something,â one man commented. âMow the lawn, get off the computer. A simple, concise statement like âI HATE Charlieâ would be sufficient.â Some of Bushartâs posts were received more positively; a meme arguing that âBillionaires fund the class war. Charlie Kirk sold it as a race warâ got several likes. The Trump meme, meanwhile, was ignored.
By Sunday evening, however, the posts had gotten the attention of Perry County Sheriff Nick Weems. An avid Facebook user himself, Weems had shared the information about the Kirk vigil on his own page a few days earlier. He had also posted his own emotional response to the news of Kirkâs murder in September, warning ominously about the âevilâ in our midst. âEvil could be your neighbor,â he wrote. âEvil could be standing right beside you in the grocery store. It could be your own family member and you never even know it.â
Weems contacted his investigator. Just under an hour later, in Lexington, Bushart wrote a two-line post on Facebook at 7:53 p.m. âReceived a visit from Lexington PD regarding my posted memes on âWhatâs Happening in Perry County,ââ he wrote. The police had come at the behest of Perry County, he said, but did not elaborate.
If he was concerned, Bushart didnât show it. He went back to posting. At 9:48 p.m., Bushart shared a meme from a page called Blue Wave 2026, featuring an unhinged-looking Roseanne Barr. âMany maga are claiming that Obama used the pressure of his office and the FCC to get Rosanne cancelled just like Trump did to Kimmel,â it read. âExcept Obama wasnât president in 2018. Care to guess who was?â
It would be his last post that night. At 11:15 p.m., police knocked on his door again. This time there were four officers, one of whom was holding a warrant for his arrest, which had been sent from Perry County. Body camera footage obtained by The Intercept shows police following Bushart inside his house and waiting while he slips on his shoes. Then they handcuff him on his front porch and lead him away.
Arriving at the local jail, the officer with the warrant unfolded the piece of paper. âJust to clarify, this is what they charged you with,â he told Bushart, pointing and reading aloud: âThreatening Mass Violence at a School.â
âAt a school?â Bushart said, sounding confused.
But the officer had no further explanation. âI ainât got a clue,â he said, chuckling. âI just gotta do what I have to do.â
Bushart laughed too. âIâve been in Facebook jail but now Iâm really in it,â he said. He hadnât committed a crime, he said. âI may have been an asshole butâŠâ
âThatâs not illegal,â the officer said.
Bushart was booked at the Perry County Jail in Linden on September 22, just before 2 a.m. He has been there ever since. His bail was set at $2 million â a shocking amount, wildly beyond his financial capacity. Under Tennessee law, Bushart would have to pay at least $210,000 to get out of jail, under onerous conditions. Although his defense attorney has filed a motion asking General Sessions Judge Katerina Moore to reduce his bail on the grounds that he is not a flight risk and does not pose a threat to the community, a hearing on the motion was reset at prosecutorsâ request. Bushartâs next court date is not scheduled to take place until December 4.
## Related
### Trumpâs Cult of Power Cancels Free Speech
Bushart is one of countless people whose lives have been upended due to social media posts shared after Kirkâs death. The murder triggered an extraordinary crackdown on speech, wielded against Americans from every level of government, with the White House and its allies targeting those whose public reactions they considered offensive. Vice President J.D. Vance urged Americans to report people to their employers. At the Pentagon, nearly 300 employees were investigated. And more recently, the State Department revoked the visas of people who spoke ill of Kirk.
In Tennessee, a wave of firings and suspensions took place across the state, with numerous public employees and college and university staffers punished for their posts. A high school science teacher was suspended after being targeted by the right-wing website The Federalist for an Instagram story calling Kirk a âPOSâ and quoting his reaction to the 2023 Covenant School shooting in Nashville, which left seven dead, including three 9-year-old students. âItâs worth to have, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God given rights,â Kirk had said. And, under pressure from Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn, who is running for Tennessee governor, a university fired a theater professor for posting an old article about Kirkâs comments, issuing a statement explaining that the professor had âreshared a post on social media that was insensitive, disrespectful and interpreted by many as propagating justification for unlawful death.â
But Bushartâs case is in a class of its own. He is almost certainly the only person who was arrested and held on a serious criminal charge for a Facebook post in the wake of Kirkâs death â a charge that seems clearly divorced from reality. Among those who have heard of it, the case has been met with shock, outrage, and considerable confusion. On TikTok, Reddit, and a âJustice for Larry Bushartâ page on Facebook, many see the case as a form of government overreach that puts all Americans in danger. And though the case is undeniably part of the broader assault on free speech sparked by the Kirk assassination, it is also locally rooted: a perfect storm of bad law, overzealous policing, and a political climate that has emboldened law enforcement officials to punish perceived enemies.
At the heart of the controversy is elected Perry County Sheriff Nick Weems. In office since 2015, his previous claim to fame in Tennessee was his response to the 2018 shooting at Parkland High School in Florida, which killed 17 people. In an impassioned open letter, he criticized politicians who failed to protect students, pledging $500 of his own money to install barricade locks on school doors in Perry County. His rallying cry: âNot Our Children!â
More recently, Weems has availed himself of a Tennessee law passed after the Covenant School shooting, which sought harsh new punishments for ârecklessly making a threat of mass violence.â The American Civil Liberties Union and other free speech experts cautioned at the time that the language was so broad, âit could potentially criminalize a wide range of adults and children who do not have any intent of actually causing harm or making a threatâ â and this is precisely what has happened. The law has ensnared numerous students for social media activity that, by all rational interpretations, are not actually threatening actual violence. Earlier this year, ProPublica and WPLN/Nashville Public Radio reported on a group of middle school cheerleaders who were slapped with criminal charges by the local sheriff for filming a TikTok video in which one girl said, âPut your hands up,â while other girls dropped to the floor.
In Bushartâs case, the warrant affidavit contains a short narrative summarizing the ostensible evidence against him. âAt approximately 1900 hours,â writes Perry County Sheriffâs Investigator Jason Morrow, âI ⊠received a message from Sheriff Nick Weems regarding a Facebook post Larry Bushart made on the Whatâs Happening in Perry County, TN Facebook page stating âThis seems relevant todayâŠâ with an image of Donald Trump and the words âWe have to get over it.ââ Morrow quotes the rest of the meme and notes that it was posted âon a message thread regarding the Charlie Kirk vigil.â He then writes: âThis was a means of communication, via picture, posted to a Perry County, TN Facebook page in which a reasonable person would conclude could lead to serious bodily injury, or death of multiple people.â
A screenshot of the meme Larry Bushart Jr. posted to Facebook. Source: Larry Bushart Jr.'s Facebook page
Itâs possible, perhaps, to imagine how the Trump meme might have set some members of the Facebook group on edge â at least upon first glance. The post invoked a school shooting at a âPerry High School.â The local high school in Linden is called Perry County High School. Moreover, just one month earlier, Weems had reported an alleged threat against the school, prompting administrators to cancel all classes âfor the safety of our students and staff.â Still, it was easy to discern that, apart from the name âPerry,â there was nothing connecting the meme to Linden.
Chris Eargle, who created the âJustice for Larry Bushartâ Facebook page, first heard about the case from news reports posted on social media. Like many online commenters, he figured there had to be more to the story. âI was very skeptical when I first saw it,â he said. âHe couldnât have just been thrown in jail with a $2 million bond just for posting a Trump meme.â But the closer he looked at the case, the more it seemed clear thatâs exactly what happened. âI was like, âOh, wow, they actually did charge him for posting a meme.ââ
Eargle requested to join the âWhatâs Happening In Perry Countyâ group and was granted access. He also started commenting on different Facebook pages linked to the sheriff. âUnwise persecution of people for their political views will cost the taxpayers millions of dollars,â he wrote in a review on the âRe-Elect Weems for Sheriffâ page. âHe should never be allowed near public office again.â Before long, the page was taken down. So was the Perry County Sheriffâs Office page.
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## Chilling Dissent
Weems had been happy to publicize Bushartâs arrest at first. In the earliest news story on September 22, local radio station WOPC published Bushartâs mugshot along with a statement from the sheriff, who said that Bushartâs meme had alluded to âa hypothetical shooting at a place called Perry High School.â According to Weems, âThat message caused considerable concern within the community and we were asked to investigate.â
Readers found this perplexing. âIâm confused,â one woman wrote on Facebook after the story was posted on the station page. âHe was talking about shooting up the school or shooting up a vigil. How are the two things connected?â Another reader speculated that Weems hadnât heard of the Iowa shooting and misinterpreted the post as a threat. âA man is in jail because the sheriff didnât use google.â
In a comment that has since been deleted, Weems personally replied to correct the record. âWe were very much aware of the meme being from an Iowa shooting,â he wrote later that afternoon. The meme âcreated mass hysteria to parents and teachers ⊠that led the normal person to conclude that he was talking about our Perry County High School.â
This did not go over well. Most people would not read the meme as a threat, several commenters pointed out. But even if the meme had caused some people to panic, one man wrote, âyour department arrested a man for expressing free speech because you listened to public hysteria rather than doing an investigation?â
Others didnât buy the notion that there had been panic at all. âMass hysteria is a lie,â another man wrote. âI hope he sues you.â
As the story spread, confusion persisted over the basic facts. Because the Facebook thread was only visible to members of the Perry County group, it was unclear to most people when, exactly, Bushart posted the memes or how people reacted â let alone whether the response could be described as âmass hysteria.â But Weems insisted that Bushart wanted to sow panic, telling The Tennessean that âinvestigators believe Bushart was fully aware of the fear his post would cause and intentionally sought to create hysteria within the community.â
Yet there were no public signs of this hysteria. Nor was there much evidence of an investigation â or any efforts to warn county schools. Although the Perry County Schools District did not respond to messages from The Intercept, attorneys with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression filed a series of open records requests with the school district asking for any communications to or from staff pertaining to the case â including terms like âshooting,â âthreat,â and âmeme.â In response, the director of schools wrote that there were no records related to Bushartâs case. âThe Perry County Sheriffâs Department handled this situation,â he wrote.
âYou would think that if a school district or a school was the target of a serious threat, they would have an email or a text message or something to students, to parents, to the safety officer, to the community, saying, âHereâs what has happened. Donât worry. Everything is all right,ââ said Adam Steinbaugh, an attorney with FIRE who has been monitoring the case. âThey have nothing.â
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Meanwhile, the Perry County Sheriffâs Office has not responded to records requests by FIRE. In a phone call with The Intercept, a sheriffâs deputy told The Intercept that any records related to the case would have to be subpoenaed. âIâm not releasing anything due to the scrutiny and the harassing phone calls weâve had,â he said, then hung up. But Weems himself responded to an email earlier this week. He said that the Perry County Sheriffâs Office Facebook page âhas been in the processâ of being deleted since July but declined to comment further. âThere is a lot of false quotes being made in regard to this case,â he wrote. âTherefore, Iâm not gonna continue to discuss the case until itâs settled in court.â
Bushartâs lawyer has not responded to messages about the case. Bushartâs wife declined to speak on the record on the advice of the attorney. But Bushartâs son defended his dad on social media, calling the prosecution âan egregious violation of his 1st Amendment rightsâ and spelling out what has been clear from the start: The meme he shared was meant to show âthe hypocrisy in honoring Charlie Kirk while ignoring other tragic incidents of mass violence.â
For now, Bushart faces the prospect of spending Thanksgiving in jail. On Tuesday, a member of the Justice for Larry Bushart page created a GiveSendGo account to raise money for his legal defense. âThis isnât just for Larry; this is a stand against overzealous law enforcement acting on skewed interpretations of free speech,â it reads. âRemember: today itâs someone else; tomorrow it could be you or me.â
To Steinbaugh, who has litigated First Amendment violations all over the country, Bushartâs case stands out. âOne thing thatâs unique about it is that nobody has done a course correction here,â he said. âIt would be one thing to have law enforcement overreacting and detaining someone ⊠and then the next day, saying, âOK, message received, weâve done our due diligence. Thatâs all we need to do here.â This guyâs been incarcerated since this happened over quoting the president. Cooler heads should have prevailed by now.â
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_ITâS EVEN WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT._
What weâre seeing right now from Donald Trump is a full-on authoritarian takeover of the U.S. government.
This is not hyperbole.
Court orders are being ignored. MAGA loyalists have been put in charge of the military and federal law enforcement agencies. The Department of Government Efficiency has stripped Congress of its power of the purse. News outlets that challenge Trump have been banished or put under investigation.
Yet far too many are still covering Trumpâs assault on democracy like politics as usual, with flattering headlines describing Trump as âunconventional,â âtesting the boundaries,â and âaggressively flexing power.â
The Intercept has long covered authoritarian governments, billionaire oligarchs, and backsliding democracies around the world. We understand the challenge we face in Trump and the vital importance of press freedom in defending democracy.
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