Bodycam footage undermined sheriff’s “true threat” justification for the arrest.
The saga of a 61-year-old man jailed for more than a month after reposting a Facebook meme has ended, but free speech advocates are still reeling in the wake.
On Wednesday, Larry Bushart was released from Perry County Jail, where he had spent weeks unable to make bail, which a judge set at $2 million. Prosecutors have not explained why the charges against him were dropped, according to The Intercept, which has been tracking the case closely. However, officials faced mounting pressure following media coverage and a social media campaign called “Free Larry Bushart,” which stoked widespread concern over suspected police censorship of a US citizen over his political views.
How a meme landed a man in jail
Bushart’s arrest came after he decided to troll a message thread about a Charlie Kirk vigil in a Facebook group called “What’s Happening in Perry County, TN.” He posted a meme showing a picture of Donald Trump saying, “We should get over it.” The meme included a caption that said “Donald Trump, on the Perry High School mass shooting, one day after,” and Bushart included a comment with his post that said, “This seems relevant today ….”
His meme caught the eye of the Perry County sheriff, Nick Weems, who had mourned Kirk’s passing on his own Facebook page, The Intercept noted.
Supposedly, Weems’ decision to go after Bushart wasn’t due to his political views but to receiving messages from parents who misread Bushart’s post as possibly threatening an attack on the local Perry County High School. To pressure Bushart to remove the post, Weems contacted the Lexington Police Department to find Bushart. That led to the meme poster’s arrest and transfer to Perry County Jail.
Weems justified the arrest by claiming that Bushart’s meme represented a true threat, since “investigators believe Bushart was fully aware of the fear his post would cause and intentionally sought to create hysteria within the community,” The Tennessean reported. But “there was no evidence of any hysteria,” The Intercept reported, leading media outlets to pick apart Weems’ story.
Perhaps most suspicious were Weems’ claims that Bushart had callously refused to take down his post after cops told him that people were scared that he was threatening a school shooting.
The Intercept and Nashville’s CBS affiliate, NewsChannel 5, secured bodycam footage from the Lexington cop that undermined Weems’ narrative. The footage clearly showed the cop did not understand why the Perry County sheriff had taken issue with Bushart’s Facebook post.
“So, I’m just going to be completely honest with you,” the cop told Bushart. “I have really no idea what they are talking about. He had just called me and said there was some concerning posts that were made….”
Bushart clarified that it was likely his Facebook posts, laughing at the notion that someone had called the cops to report his meme. The Lexington officer told Bushart that he wasn’t sure “exactly what” Facebook post “they are referring to you,” but “they said that something was insinuating violence.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Bushart responded, confirming that “I’m not going to take it down.”
The cop, declining to even glance at the Facebook post, told Bushart, “I don’t care. This ain’t got nothing to do with me.” But the officer’s indifference didn’t stop Lexington police from taking Bushart into custody, booking him, and sending him to Weems’ county, where Bushart was charged “under a state law passed in July 2024 that makes it a Class E felony to make threats against schools,” The Tennessean reported.
“Just to clarify, this is what they charged you with,” a Perry County jail officer told Bushart—which was recorded on footage reviewed by The Intercept—“Threatening Mass Violence at a School.”
“At a school?” Bushart asked.
“I ain’t got a clue,” the officer responded, laughing. “I just gotta do what I have to do.”
“I’ve been in Facebook jail, but now I’m really in it,” Bushart said, joining him in laughing.
Cops knew the meme wasn’t a threat
Lexington police told The Intercept that Weems had lied when he told local news outlets that the forces had “coordinated” to offer Bushart a chance to delete the post prior to his arrest. Confronted with the bodycam footage, Weems denied lying, claiming that his investigator’s report must have been inaccurate, NewsChannel 5 reported.
Weems later admitted to NewsChannel 5 that “investigators knew that the meme was not about Perry County High School” and sought Bushart’s arrest anyway, supposedly hoping to quell “the fears of people in the community who misinterpreted it.” That’s as close as Weems comes to seemingly admitting that his intention was to censor the post.
The Perry County Sheriff’s Office did not respond to Ars’ request to comment.
According to The Tennessean, the law that landed Bushart behind bars has been widely criticized by First Amendment advocates. Beth Cruz, a lecturer in public interest law at Vanderbilt University Law School, told The Tennessean that “518 children in Tennessee were arrested under the current threats of mass violence law, including 71 children between the ages of 7 and 11” last year alone.
The law seems to contradict Supreme Court precedent, which set a high bar for what’s considered a “true threat,” recognizing that “it is easy for speech made in one context to inadvertently reach a larger audience” that misinterprets the message.
“The risk of overcriminalizing upsetting or frightening speech has only been increased by the Internet,” SCOTUS ruled. Justices warned then that “without sufficient protection for unintentionally threatening speech, a high school student who is still learning norms around appropriate language could easily go to prison.” They also feared that “someone may post an enraged comment under a news story about a controversial topic” that potentially gets them in trouble for speaking out “in the heat of the moment.”
“In a Nation that has never been timid about its opinions, political or otherwise, this is commonplace,” SCOTUS noted.
Dissenting judges, including Amy Coney Barrett and Clarence Thomas, thought the ruling went too far to protect speech, however. They felt that so long as a “reasonable person would regard the statement as a threat of violence,” that supposedly objective standard could be enough to criminalize speech like Bushart’s.
Adam Steinbaugh, an attorney with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, told The Intercept that “people’s performative overreaction is not a sufficient basis to limit someone else’s free speech rights.”
“A free country does not dispatch police in the dead of night to pull people from their homes because a sheriff objects to their social media posts,” Steinbaugh said.
Man resumes Facebook posting upon release
Chris Eargle, who started the “Free Larry Bushart” Facebook group, told The Intercept that Weems’ story justifying the arrest made no sense. Instead, it seemed like the sheriff’s actions were politically motivated, Eargle suggested, intended to silence people like Bushart with a show of force demonstrating that “if you say something I don’t like, and you don’t take it down, now you’re going to be in trouble.”
“I mean, it’s just control over people’s speech,” Eargle said.
The Perry County Sheriff’s office chose to remove its Facebook page after the controversy, and it remains down as of this writing.
But Weems logged onto his Facebook page on Wednesday before Bushart’s charges were dropped, The Intercept reported. The sheriff seemingly stuck to his guns that people had interpreted the meme as a threat to a local school, claiming that he’s “100 percent for protecting the First Amendment. However, freedom of speech does not allow anyone to put someone else in fear of their well being.”
For Bushart, who The Intercept noted retired from decades in law enforcement last year, the arrest turned him into an icon of free speech, but it also shook up his life. He lost his job as a medical driver, and he missed the birth of his granddaughter.
Leaving jail, Bushart said he was “very happy to be going home.” He thanked all his supporters who ensured that he would not have to wait until December 4 to petition for his bail to be reduced—a delay which the prosecution had sought shortly before abruptly dismissing the charges, The Intercept reported.
Back at his computer, Bushart logged onto Facebook, posting first about his grandkid, then resuming his political trolling.
Eargle claimed many others fear posting their political opinions after Bushart’s arrest, though. Bushart’s son, Taylor, told Nashville news outlet WKRN that it has been a “trying time” for his family, while noting that his father’s release “doesn’t change what has happened to him” or threats to speech that could persist under Tennessee’s law.
“I can’t even begin to express how thankful we are for the outpour of support he has received,” Taylor said. “If we don’t fight to protect and preserve our rights today, just as we’ve now seen, they may be gone tomorrow.”
Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.
