A Tennessee man who spent more than five weeks behind bars on a felony charge, for posting a meme about Charlie Kirk's killing, walked away this week with $835,000 from the county and officials who arrested him. The settlement marks a hard-won vindication for Larry Bushart and a costly reminder to local authorities that the First Amendment does not bend to political discomfort.
Perry County, Sheriff Nick Weems, and investigator Jason Morrow agreed to pay Bushart the six-figure sum in exchange for his dropping a federal lawsuit he filed in December, the Washington Examiner reported. The deal closes a case that began last fall, when Bushart posted a meme in a Perry County Facebook group after the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
The meme featured a photo of President Donald Trump alongside the quote "We have to get over it", words Trump used after a mass shooting in Perry, Iowa, in 2025. Bushart captioned it, "This seems relevant today." The post appeared to apply Trump's sentiment to Kirk's death, a pointed, sardonic take, but one squarely within the boundaries of political speech Americans have exercised since the founding.
Some Perry County residents read Bushart's post differently. They interpreted it as a threat to shoot up Perry County High School in Linden. Sheriff Weems arrested Bushart for threatening to commit an act of mass violence at the school. Investigator Jason Morrow obtained the arrest warrant.
Bushart's bond was set at $2 million, a staggering figure for a Facebook post. He could not pay it. He sat in jail for 37 days.
Weems defended the arrest publicly, telling News 2 that Bushart's post caused "multiple, reasonable citizens to be in fear of their children's safety at school." But the sheriff's own words to a different outlet told a different story. NewsChannel 5 Investigates confronted Weems directly:
"You also knew this was an existing meme that was already out there on the Internet."
Weems did not deny it. When the interviewer pressed further, "It's clear that he's not talking about Perry County High School", Weems replied simply: "Correct."
Then came the admission that lays the whole episode bare. Weems acknowledged that authorities understood Bushart was not threatening the school. "We knew," the sheriff said. His justification? "The public did not know."
That distinction, between what law enforcement knew and what the public feared, is exactly the kind of gap the First Amendment exists to police. Authorities cannot jail a citizen for speech they privately recognize as non-threatening simply because bystanders misread it. The Constitution does not deputize crowd panic as probable cause.
District Attorney General Hans Schwendimann apparently agreed. He declined to prosecute and dropped the felony charge in October, more than a month after Bushart first posted the memes. By then, Bushart had already lost 37 days of his life inside a jail cell, held on a bond more commonly associated with violent felons than Facebook commenters.
With the charge gone, Bushart filed suit in December against Perry County, Weems, and Morrow, alleging they violated his constitutional rights. The lawsuit did not linger long. Tennessee officials settled this week for $835,000.
Bushart issued a statement Wednesday announcing the resolution. He did not gloat. He did not rage. He kept it measured:
"I am pleased my First Amendment rights have been vindicated. The people's freedom to participate in civil discourse is crucial to a healthy democracy. I am looking forward to moving on and spending time with my family."
That restraint is worth noting. A man who lost five weeks of freedom over a meme, who faced a felony and a $2 million bond for political commentary the sheriff privately admitted was not a threat, responded with the kind of composure the officials who arrested him never showed.
The $835,000 payout speaks loudly on its own. Perry County taxpayers now foot the bill for their sheriff's decision to arrest a man over protected speech. Whether the settlement included any admission of wrongdoing is not publicly clear. But the size of the check, combined with the district attorney's refusal to prosecute and Weems's own on-camera concession, paints a picture that needs no caption.
Consider the sequence. Bushart posts a widely circulating internet meme with political commentary. Some residents panic. The sheriff arrests him on a mass-violence threat charge. The sheriff privately acknowledges the post was not a threat to the local school. A $2 million bond keeps Bushart locked up for over a month. The DA drops the case entirely. The county writes a check for $835,000.
At every decision point, someone in authority could have paused, examined the actual content of the speech, and recognized it for what it was: a sharp political opinion, not a criminal threat. No one did, or if they did, they chose to act anyway.
Free speech cases rarely arrive wrapped in sympathetic packaging. The memes that trigger arrests are almost always provocative, tasteless, or offensive to someone. That is the point. Speech that offends no one needs no constitutional protection.
Bushart's case is a textbook example of what happens when local officials let public fear override legal judgment. Weems told NewsChannel 5 that he knew the meme was not a school threat. He arrested Bushart anyway because "the public did not know." That reasoning inverts the role of law enforcement. A sheriff's job is to investigate whether a crime occurred, not to validate public misunderstanding by slapping cuffs on the person who caused it.
The $2 million bond compounded the problem. Setting bail at that level for a speech-related charge effectively guaranteed Bushart would remain in custody, punishment before trial for an offense the DA would later refuse to prosecute. Thirty-seven days is not a bureaucratic hiccup. It is five weeks a man cannot get back.
The full text of Bushart's Facebook posts beyond the quoted meme language has not been publicly detailed. The arrest warrant obtained by Morrow has not been released. And the specific court that handled both the felony charge and the December lawsuit has not been identified in available reporting. Those gaps matter, because the details of what Morrow put in the warrant application, and what a judge signed off on, would reveal how thin or thick the legal basis for the arrest actually was.
What is known is damning enough. The sheriff admitted on camera that he understood the post was not a threat to Perry County High School. The DA refused to take the case to trial. And Tennessee officials cut a check rather than defend their conduct in court.
Perry County residents now pay $835,000 for a lesson their sheriff should have learned for free: the First Amendment protects speech you don't like, and arresting people for it costs everyone.