By ALANNA DURKIN RICHER

WASHINGTON (AP) — A man captured on camera hurling a sandwich at a federal agent in D.C. has been charged with a misdemeanor offense after prosecutors failed to convince a grand jury to return a more serious felony indictment, according to court papers filed Thursday.

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The move is a blow to the Trump administration, which had highlighted the felony assault case against Sean Charles Dunn to show it would aggressively prosecute violence against law enforcement — even after Trump pardoned Jan. 6 rioters who brutally attacked officers with poles and other makeshift weapons.

The White House had spotlighted Dunn’s case with a dramatic social media video of his arrest by federal agents. And Washington’s top federal prosecutor, Jeanine Pirro, also touted the felony charge in another social media video, saying into the camera: “So there, stick your subway sandwich somewhere else.”

Dunn is now charged with simple assault, which carries up to one year behind bars. Misdemeanor charges don’t require prosecutors to go to a grand jury. The felony assault charge calls for up to eight years behind bars. Dunn’s attorney didn’t immediately return an email seeking comment.

It’s so rare for a grand jury not to return an indictment that there’s an old saying that prosecutors could convince a grand jury to “indict a ham sandwich.” But grand juries have declined to return indictments a handful of times in recent weeks in Washington — a potential sign of residents’ frustration with the ongoing law enforcement operation that has led to federal charges in many cases that would typically be handled in local court.

A video of Dunn throwing the sandwich at the chest of the agent who was patrolling the nation’s capital went viral in the first days after Trump’s Aug. 11 order for federal agents and troops to flood Washington. Authorities say he also pointed a finger in an agent’s face and swore at him, calling him a “fascist.”

“Why are you here? I don’t want you in my city!” Dunn shouted, according to police.

Dunn tried to run away but was apprehended, police said. He was initially released and later arrested by federal agents on the felony assault charge. It was later revealed that he had been working as an international affairs specialist in the Justice Department’s criminal division, though he was swiftly fired by Attorney General Pam Bondi.

In another recent case, prosecutors in Washington acknowledged that three grand juries had voted separately against indicting a woman accused of assaulting an FBI agent outside the city’s jail in July, where she was recording video of the transfer of inmates into the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Rebuffed by the grand juries, Pirro’s office is pursuing a misdemeanor assault charge against Sydney Lori Reid instead.

The depth of the Gophers’ defense is hit hardest by the season-opening unavailability report released before the Buffalo game at Huntington Bank Stadium on Thursday.

Defensive tackle Mo Omonode is out for the season; the 6-foot, 285-pounder transferred in from Purdue after spring practices to help provide depth behind starters Deven Eastern and Jalen Logan-Redding. But a back injury will keep him out.

D-tackle Theorin Randle is also out this week.

Safety/nickel back Darius Green and cornerback Mike Gerald are ruled out, while nickel back Jai’Onte’ McMillan is listed as questionable.

Gerald was locked in a competition for snaps at cornerback alongside Iowa transfer John Nestor and North Carolina Center transfer Jayden Bowden.

Receiver Cristian Driver, who missed multiple open practices during preseason camp, was listed as out. The son of former Packers wideout Donald Driver had seven receptions for 49 yards and one touchdown last year.

Six other players were listed as out: offensive lineman Spencer Alvarez, kicker Sam Henson, offensive lineman Daniel Shipp, receivers Legend Lyons and Bradley Martino. Linebacker Drew Wilson is also out for the year.

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MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — A judge on Thursday ordered a new trial for three former Memphis police officers who were convicted of federal charges in the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols, after defense lawyers argued that another judge who presided over their trial was biased against the men.

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U.S. District Judge Sheryl H. Lipman issued the order for a new trial for Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley and Justin Smith, who were found guilty in October 2024 of obstruction of justice through witness tampering in the January 2023 beating death of Nichols after he fled a traffic stop.

Two other officers, Emmitt Martin and Desmond Mills Jr., also were charged, but they pleaded guilty before the federal trial.

Lipman took over the case in June after U.S. District Judge Mark S. Norris, who presided over the case and the trial, recused himself days before the sentencings for the five officers.

On Jan. 7, 2023, the officers yanked Nichols from his car and then pepper-sprayed and hit the 29-year-old Black man with a Taser. Nichols fled, and when the five officers, who also are Black, caught up with him, they punched, kicked and hit him with a police baton. Nichols called out for his mother during the beating, which took place steps from his home.

Nichols died Jan three days later.

Video of the beating captured by a police pole camera also showed the officers milling about, talking and laughing as Nichols struggled with his injuries.

It prompted intense scrutiny of police in Memphis, nationwide protests and renewed calls for police reform.

And so the purge continues. Some of us used to think, or hope, that President Donald Trump’s campaign of “retribution” would prove brutal but short, leaving American statecraft bruised but functional. The news flow suggests a different direction. As Senator Mark Warner puts it, “when expertise is cast aside and intelligence is distorted or silenced, our adversaries gain the upper hand and America is left less safe.”

Warner, a Democrat who is vice chair of the senate’s intelligence committee, was referring to the firing of Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. The DIA is the Pentagon spy outfit that concluded in an initial assessment after the American bombing of Iran in June that the strikes had probably set back Tehran’s nuclear efforts only by months. That contradicted Trump’s narrative, in which he had “obliterated” Iran’s program. Goodbye Kruse.

His fate is just one instance in a pattern that began as soon as Trump returned to the White House. For months, his administration has been ridding its national-security apparatus, diplomatic corps and other executive-branch cadres of anybody it deems potentially “disloyal,” often on the advice of MAGA conspiracy theorists who aren’t even in government, have no expertise, and think grounds for termination should include such things as, say, service in the administration of Joe Biden.

The witch hunt doesn’t have to entail termination. In another act of vicarious vengeance, Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, just revoked the security clearances for 37 people currently or formerly in government, in many cases ending their careers. Their sin was involvement in an assessment which the intelligence community made in 2017 (and which the Senate intelligence committee later validated) that Russia had meddled in the American election of 2016. Trump calls it the “Russia hoax.”

In that way, Gabbard yet again sacrificed scarce and even unique expertise to please the president. For example, one of the 37, Vinh Nguyen at the National Security Agency, was a specialist in data science and cyberthreats, and specifically in the artificial-intelligence contest with China. The folks in Zhongnanhai must be popping baijiu corks.

Kruse, Nguyen and their ilk are not household names. John Bolton is. He was one of the National Security Advisors in Trump’s first term but subsequently became a scathing critic (who warned that Trump’s encore would be a “retribution presidency”). On day one of his second term, Trump took away Bolton’s security detail (even though Bolton is personally under threat from Iran). On Friday the FBI rifled through Bolton’s house, ostensibly in search of classified documents he may or may not have mishandled. Like all the firings and revocations, the raid sends the chilling message that it doesn’t matter what you know, only whether you’re with Trump.

But if you are with him, you’re not down and out but up or in. For ambassador to India — the world’s most populous country and a vital, if complicated, frenemy of the United States — Trump just nominated Sergio Gor, a political operative whose only qualification seems to be his work as a fundraiser and aide to the president. Charles Kushner is ambassador to America’s oldest ally, France, and in over his head — the father of Trump’s son-in-law, Kushner is a real-estate developer who once did a stint in prison for white-collar crimes (although Trump later pardoned him). On it goes.

From the middle rungs of government to the top floors, fealty is supplanting expertise. Gabbard, like her counterparts at the CIA and FBI, is given more to conspiracy theories than analytical rigor. The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, is a television personality overseeing chaos. And the Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, Marco Rubio, apparently forfeited his (considerable) expertise to please his boss. In any case, Rubio is not the one mainly dealing with Russia, Iran or Israel, say.

That would be Steve Witkoff, Trump’s all-purpose “special envoy” — not a diplomat, but a real-estate developer and Trump confidante. He’s now the president’s interlocutor with Russian leader Vladimir Putin (“I liked him,” Witkoff said after one visit). Stopping by the Kremlin the other day, Witkoff apparently didn’t bring a translator and relied on the Russian one. He either misunderstood or garbled Putin’s message; or he just became the latest victim of Putin’s KGB-style mind-manipulation. In any case, the resulting summit between Trump and Putin achieved precisely nothing.

Expertise without democratic accountability can lead to technocracy and a different kind of dystopia. But America’s strength has long been to balance both — the wisdom of impartial experts and the control of elected leaders. This gave the U.S. an obvious edge over its autocratic adversaries. American advisers, by and large, told their president the truth, especially when it was unpleasant. Their counterparts in Russia, say, instead tell their president whatever he wants to hear, leading to disastrous decisions such as the invasion of Ukraine.

Seven months into Trump’s second term, his administration now appears not just willing but eager to surrender this American advantage. And the first to feel the loss are the worker bees and drones inside the hives of American diplomacy and national security. Addressing them, William Burns, a former CIA director, laments that “you all got caught in the crossfire of a retribution campaign — of a war on public service and expertise.”

In the course of human events — at the courts of tsars, sultans, kaisers, shahs and the like — fealty has usually trumped expertise. The first surprise was that one major world power, by some accounts the greatest ever, became the exception and put expertise first. The second surprise seems to be that this same nation now voluntarily forsakes its superpower. If you happen to be in the Kremlin or in Zhongnanhai, that must feel satisfying.

Andreas Kluth is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering U.S. diplomacy, national security and geopolitics. Previously, he was editor-in-chief of Handelsblatt Global and a writer for the Economist.