Feds Drop Case Against Man Accused of Injuring Greg Bovino’s Groin

The man who federal agents accused of dealing Greg Bovino a groin injury from which the Border Patrol commander purportedly needed two weeks to recover will no longer face charges after prosecutors on Monday moved to drop their case against him.

Per a motion to dismiss the complaint, federal prosecutors will no longer pursue a charge of impeding a federal officer. Cole Sheridan, the protester, was initially charged with assaulting and impeding a federal officer over an Oct. 3 protest in which a Homeland Security Investigations agent accused the man of shoving Bovino. Prosecutors could still bring charges against Sheridan in another form.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois did not immediately return TPM’s request for comment about the reasons for the dismissal. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security referred TPM to DOJ. Sheridan’s lawyer declined to comment.

The Monday motion to dismiss is the latest example of prosecutors faltering in their efforts to pursue charges of interfering with federal officers against people who protest ramped-up Border Patrol and ICE operations in Chicago. In several of these cases, TPM has reported, judges expressed surprise after noting that video footage did not support claims laid out in federal agents’ affidavits.

Sheridan’s case is unique in that it involves one of the Trump administration’s highest-profile promoters of mass deportations, CBP commander Greg Bovino. An affidavit accused Sheridan of getting into a shoving match with a CBP agent. Per reporting from a court hearing last month, the Homeland Security Investigations official identified that agent as Bovino; the CBP commander later took a two-week leave from the Chicago operation because of a groin injury that, the investigator said, he incurred during the incident.

Bovino has become a one-man flashpoint in Operation Midway Blitz, the administration’s escalation in Chicago, orchestrating showy stunts like a raid on a South Side apartment complex last month that involved Black Hawk helicopters. More recently, Bovino made a series of bizarre tactical hand gestures as he left a court hearing last week while surrounded by press.

Footage of the alleged altercation failed to support the assault claim, per reports from the hearing. Bovino himself did not wear a bodycam that day. “Without video of the actual physical exchange … there is only the evidence of the hearsay statement of Bovino,” Magistrate Judge Heather K. McShain reportedly said.

McShain later declined to find probable cause for assaulting a federal officer, trimming that allegation from the charge while allowing the rest of the government’s case to continue.

The motion to dismiss comes as prosecutors continue to file “impeding” charges against protestors across the country. In Chicago, federal prosecutors brought a conspiracy charge under the statute last week against Kat Abughazaleh, a social media-savvy candidate in the Democratic primary for Illinois’ 9th District, over an incident in which she and several others allegedly blocked a car. In Los Angeles, prosecutors are applying the same charge against Carlos Jimenez, a man who a deportation officer shot in the back last week after Jimenez reversed his car towards the officers. Federal law enforcement has said that they believed Jimenez was “rapidly accelerating” and presented a threat. Jimenez’s attorneys have said that he was trying to leave the area after telling ICE officers in the car that children were assembling nearby at a bus stop, and that an agent threatened him with chemical spray and pointed a gun at him before he tried to drive away.