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More than a<\/span> month after he was arrested for sharing a meme on Facebook, 61-year-old Larry Bushart Jr. walked out of the Perry County jail in Linden, Tennessee, on Wednesday, where his wife was waiting to take him home. He wore a weary smile and the same white T-shirt he had on the night he was jailed. A reporter from a local news<\/a> station, which had previously splashed his mugshot on its website, approached for an interview.<\/p>\n \u201cThanks to all and any supporters out there,\u201d Bushart said. \u201cAnd very happy to be going home.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t seek to be a media sensation,\u201d he added. \u201cBut here we are. Yeah, that\u2019s about all I can say right now.\u201d<\/p>\n Bushart\u2019s case raised a firestorm of controversy after he was arrested, jailed, and slapped with a $2 million bail for a social media post. His supposed crime: making a threat of mass violence against a school in a neighboring county. In reality, all he had done was repost a meme. On Saturday, September 20, he had visited a community page, \u201cWhat\u2019s Happening in Perry County, TN,\u201d and trolled a thread about an upcoming vigil honoring Charlie Kirk.<\/p>\n One of his posts was a photo of President Donald Trump, along with the quote \u201cWe have to get over it,\u201d drawing from his response to a school shooting in Perry, Iowa, in 2024. The post caught the attention of Perry County Sheriff Nick Weems, who had publicly mourned Kirk and shared information about the vigil. Armed with a Tennessee law that was aimed at preventing school shootings but which has ensnared numerous people for their social media activity<\/a>, the sheriff got a warrant for Bushart\u2019s arrest. According to Weems, the words \u201cPerry High School\u201d in the meme were interpreted by locals as a threat to a high school in Perry County. In statements to the press, Weems claimed Bushart had caused \u201cmass hysteria.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet there was no evidence of any hysteria. The local school district had not received any communications from the sheriff\u2019s department warning them of a threat, nor had it sent any warnings to the school community. Although the sheriff insisted that parents and teachers had been gripped with fear by the meme, he has shown zero evidence to support his claims.<\/p>\n Bushart\u2019s case attracted<\/a> several rounds<\/a> of media attention, from the days immediately following his September arrest to this past week, when Weems sat down for a TV interview to defend his actions. But the Intercept was instrumental in publicizing his case; it was the first to provide a detailed account<\/a> of the response to the meme within the closed Facebook group \u2014 which showed no reaction to the meme in question, let alone panic or fear \u2014 and to report that the local school district had no records of any communications with the sheriff over an alleged threat. The Intercept was also the first to obtain body camera footage undermining the sheriff\u2019s claims, in which officers from the Lexington Police Department appeared to distance themselves from the prosecution in the neighboring county.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The tipping point came less than a week later, after Nashville\u2019s CBS affiliate NewsChannel 5 aired a sit-down interview<\/a> with Weems, conducted by veteran investigative reporter Phil Williams. Sitting at his desk in front of a huge \u201cthin blue line<\/a>\u201d American flag painted on his office wall, Weems defended the arrest, insisting that there were people \u201cscared to send their kids to school\u201d as a result of Bushart\u2019s post. But he also put a new spin on the case, casting Bushart as a callous man who had rebuffed reasonable attempts by the police to deescalate the situation.<\/p>\n \u201cWe tried to take a different approach and go and speak to this guy and say, \u2018Hey, look, this is what you\u2019re doing,\u2019\u201d Weems told Williams, apparently referring to an initial visit by Lexington police. According to the sheriff, the officers asked him to take down the offending post. \u201cWhenever we sent Lexington Police Department out to speak to him and he refused to do that, I mean, what kind of person does that?\u201d Weems asked Williams. \u201cWhat kind of person just says he don\u2019t care?\u201d<\/p>\n