A man charged with aiming a laser at Marine One while it transported Donald Trump has been acquitted by a jury in Washington DC. Jacob Winkler, 33, was found not guilty on Tuesday after the jury deliberated for just 35 minutes.
Winkler faced a felony count of aiming a laser at an aircraft, carrying a potential sentence of up to five years in prison. He was arrested in September after a US Secret Service agent claimed to have seen him pointing a red laser beam toward the helicopter as it flew low after leaving the White House.
The verdict represents another high-profile defeat for Jeanine Pirro, the former Fox News host appointed US attorney for the District of Columbia by Trump. Pirro had pledged to prosecute Winkler 'to the fullest extent of the law'. Her office has pursued harsh penalties in cases involving attacks on federal officers or threats against the president, but has suffered multiple failures.
Winkler's public defenders, Alexis Gardner and Ubong Akpan, said in a statement that the case highlighted a 'disturbing reality' of policing poverty. They noted that the federal government spent scarce resources to criminalise a homeless man over a cat toy keychain. The outcome echoes another recent loss for Pirro's office, where a man who threw a sandwich at a federal officer was also acquitted.
