A man who was charged with a felony for allegedly shining a laser beam at Marine One while it carried President Donald Trump was found not guilty by a Washington, D.C., jury in less than an hour on Tuesday.
The acquittal of Jacob Winkler marks yet another embarrassing setback for Jeanine Pirro, the Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, who’s struggled to make an example out of people her office claims assaulted federal agents or threatened the president.
Advertisement
Winkler, 33, was arrested in September when a U.S. Secret Service agent ” and served no purpose other than to boost numbers for Pirro’s office and make crime in D.C. look worse than it really is.
In the most high-profile case, a D.C. man was charged with assaulting a U.S. Border Patrol agent after hitting him in the chest with a turkey sandwich from Subway. A grand jury declined to return a felony indictment in the case, so Pirro’s office pursued a misdemeanor assault charge against him. A D.C. jury found him not guilty as well.
Advertisement
