Tag: memes

This Tennessee Man Spent 37 Days in Jail for Sharing an Anti-Trump Meme. He Says the Cops Should Pay for That.

In the aftermath of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s murder on September 10, his admirers were offended by online messages that denigrated him, condemned his views, and in some cases even celebrated his death. The people outraged by that commentary evidently included Nick Weems, sheriff of Perry County, Tennessee, who used the powers of his office to strike back at Kirk’s detractors.

As Reason‘s Joe Lancaster reported in October, Weems arranged the arrest of a Kirk critic, Henderson County resident Larry Bushart, on a flagrantly frivolous criminal charge. Because Bushart was unable to cover the staggering $2 million bond demanded for his release (which would have required him to “pay a bondsman at least $210,000,” Lancaster noted), he spent 37 days in jail before the district attorney for Perry County dropped the charge against him after the case drew widespread criticism.

Bushart’s arrest for constitutionally protected speech violated the First Amendment, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) argues in a federal lawsuit against Perry County, Weems, and Jason Morrow, an investigator in the sheriff’s office. The complaint, which was filed on Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee, says the defendants also violated the Fourth Amendment by arresting Bushart without probable cause. And because they pursued a malicious prosecution, FIRE argues, they should be liable for punitive as well as compensatory damages.

“I spent over three decades in law enforcement, and have the utmost respect for the law,” says Bushart, whose career included 19 years at the Jackson Police Department, five years at the Haywood County Sheriff’s Office, and nine years at the Tennessee Department of Correction. “But I also know my rights, and I was arrested for nothing more than refusing to be bullied into censorship.”

Weems was irked by Bushart’s response to a candlelight vigil for Kirk that was scheduled for the evening of September 20 on the lawn of the Perry County Courthouse—an event that the sheriff himself had promoted on Facebook. That day, Bushart saw a post about the vigil on the “What’s Happening, Perry County?” Facebook page. Commenting on that message, Bushart shared eight anti-Kirk memes, including one highlighting a comment that Donald Trump, then a presidential candidate, made the day after the January 2024 mass shooting at Perry High School in Iowa.

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Texas Sheriff arrests vet for political meme, then sets up a ‘hotline’ to report more…

Texas is supposed to be the last place on earth where someone gets hauled off in handcuffs over a meme, right? Yet here we are… a military veteran in Hood County was just arrested for posting a satirical meme online, and the entire thing feels like a really scary, anti-American déjà vu after what happened to Douglass Mackey. The Biden regime slapped a felony on him for posting a hilarious anti-Hillary meme. Thankfully, a unanimous appeals court tossed out the conviction, but the message was clear: political humor is now a criminal offense if the wrong people get embarrassed.

And now it’s happening again. Only this time not in New York or D.C., but in deep-red Texas.

And to make this whole thing even more ridiculous, Hood County has now launched something straight out of a bad dystopian comedy: a “meme hotline” where residents can call the sheriff’s office to report each other for posting jokes online. Yes, a hotline… for memes.

Seriously, Texas, what the hell are you doing?

What’s happening in Hood County isn’t law enforcement. This is left-wing-style weaponization of political speech, and now, it’s being criminalized at the local level, and the fact that it’s happening in a conservative state should terrify everyone even more than the Mackey case did.

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Hood County Sheriff Arrests Man for Social Media Posts

The Hood County Sheriff’s Office arrested Kolton Krottinger, a Navy veteran and local Granbury activist, for a social media post.

According to a criminal complaint, Krottinger had posted on social media under the guise of someone else. Residents have suggested that the October 2 post—showing another local activist appearing to support then-Granbury school board candidate Monica Brown—is the one in question.

Hood County Constable John Shirley said he thought the post was a joke, and that the individual the post impersonated would never have supported Brown “because she very openly, loudly, and publicly hates her.”

Krottinger was charged on November 5 with “online impersonation” in the third degree. His lawyer, Rob Christian, said he had been arrested for “posting a meme.” In his 25 years as a district attorney and criminal defense attorney, Christian told the Dallas Express he had “never seen anyone get arrested for engaging in political speech.”

Nate Criswell, former Hood County GOP chair, believes the arrest is politically motivated. “This charge is based on a satirical post where he humorously photoshopped a political rival’s image, making it appear as though she supported Monica Brown for school board,” he wrote in a petition he started for law enforcement to drop the charges. “Importantly, no actual account was created, making the charge baseless and unfair. Additionally, other elements of the statute were not met.”

Constable Shirley, who serves criminal and civil papers in the county’s 2nd precinct, agreed that something about the arrest seems wrong. “This kind of stuff really smells of authoritarianism.”

Texas Scorecard obtained a copy of the conditions of Krottinger’s $10,000 bond. He cannot access social media, nor can he have any contact with the other activist. Criswell said social media is where Kolton makes his livelihood and called the social media ban “egregious.”

Brandon Hall, who represents Granbury and others in District 11 on the State Board of Education, expressed alarm.

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Prosecutors Drop Charges Against Tennessee Man Over Facebook Meme

Last month, Tennessee authorities arrested a man for posting a Facebook meme, a clear violation of his First Amendment rights, and held him on a $2 million bond. This week, prosecutors dropped the case, but that doesn’t negate the weeks he spent in jail on a bogus charge.

As Reason previously reported, police arrested 61-year-old Larry Bushart for posting a meme on Facebook. In a thread about the murder of Charlie Kirk, Bushart posted a meme with a picture of President Donald Trump and the quote “We have to get over it,” which Trump said after a January 2024 shooting at Perry High School in Perry, Iowa.

Sheriff Nick Weems of nearby Perry County said Bushart intentionally posted the meme to make people think he was referring to Perry County High School. “Investigators believe Bushart was fully aware of the fear his post would cause and intentionally sought to create hysteria within the community,” Weems told The Tennesseean.

On September 21, deputies arrested Bushart at his house and booked him on a charge of Threats of Mass Violence on School Property and Activities, a felony that carries at least a year in prison. In body camera footage posted online by Liliana Segura of The Intercept, Bushart is incredulous when presented with the charge. “I don’t think I committed a crime,” he tells the officer, jokingly admitting that “I may have been an asshole.”

“That’s not illegal,” the officer replies as he leads Bushart into a cell.

Unfortunately, it was no laughing matter: A judge imposed a $2 million bond. Getting out on bail would require Bushart to come up with at least $210,000. According to the Perry County Circuit Court website, Bushart had a hearing scheduled for October 9, where he could file a motion for a reduced bond, but a court clerk told Reason that the hearing was “reset” for December 4. As a result, Bushart sat in jail for weeks.

Right away, it should have been clear how flimsy the case was. But the sheriff doubled down.

As Segura reported at The Intercept, Weems personally responded to people on Facebook suggesting Bushart was arrested because authorities misread a picture that briefly referenced a prior news event on the other side of the country. “We were very much aware of the meme being from an Iowa shooting,” Weems wrote. But it “created mass hysteria to parents and teachers…that led the normal person to conclude that he was talking about our Perry County High School.”

“Yet there were no public signs of this hysteria,” Segura notes. “Nor was there much evidence of an investigation—or any efforts to warn county schools.”

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Germany’s War on Satire: AfD MP Fined €11,250 for Meme While Leftist Magazine Is Celebrated After It Depicts Trump Giving Hitler Salute

Germany is no longer a democracy — it’s a warning. A German court has just fined AfD lawmaker Petr Bystron €11,250 for sharing a satirical meme online, while the country’s liberal establishment laughs as one of its biggest magazines once showed President Donald Trump giving the Hitler salute on its cover with the headline “Sein Kampf” (“His Struggle”).

That cover made international headlines in 2017. No prosecutor, no police, no criminal charge. It was called “art.”

But when Bystron — a conservative member of parliament — posted a meme mocking Ukraine’s former ambassador Andrij Melnyk, who had publicly defended a Nazi collaborator, the German justice system came crashing down on him.

Mock a Nazi Apologist? Get Convicted in Germany.

The meme, published in July 2022, showed German politicians “waving goodbye” to Melnyk after his recall from Berlin. Prosecutors said the waves looked like “Hitler salutes.” You can’t make this up.

Bystron’s real “crime”? Daring to expose hypocrisy in a system that protects globalists and punishes dissent.

Melnyk, the Ukrainian diplomat at the center of it all, had told a German interviewer that Stepan Bandera, a Nazi collaborator responsible for mass killings of Jews and Poles, was “no mass murderer.” That statement caused outrage in Poland and Israel — but in Germany’s woke establishment? Nothing. Melnyk stayed a hero. He was later promoted by Volodymyr Zelensky to Deputy Foreign Minister.

Bystron mocked that insanity — and Germany called him the extremist.

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