'Oh yes I can': ​​​​Combat veteran charged for flag burning defends right to protest​​​​

Combat veteran Jan Carey, who was charged with a misdemeanor for burning a flag outside the White House in August, says he absolutely had the right to do so, according to The Baltimore Sun.

"It was hours after President Donald Trump signed an executive order to protect the American flag from 'desecration,' and Jan Carey said he knew what he had to do," Jeff Barker writes.

"According to court documents, Carey, 54, a North Carolina combat veteran, set a flag down on bricks in a park across from the White House and announced with a bullhorn that he was an Army veteran about to burn a flag to protest Trump’s order he believes violates free speech rights. Then he lit the small flag on fire," Barker explains.

Carey tells the Sun "that was my way of pushing back. [Trump] said 'You can't burn the flag.' I said, 'Oh yes I can,'" and he did just that in Lafayette Square outside the White House.

Though the Supreme Court has said that governments can't ban flag burning as a means of political expression and thought, people can be charged with endangering others or property in the process.

Carey was charged with misdemeanor counts of lighting a fire in an "undesignated area and in a way that causes property damage and poses a safety hazard. He has pleaded not guilty," Barker says.

Prosecutors from the office of Washington U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro charge that Carey "is being prosecuted for his criminal conduct in violation of the federal regulations to protect public safety and not for his speech."

“Defendant’s First Amendment and vindictive prosecution arguments are red herrings for this Court,” reads Pirro's November 14 brief.

Each count carries a penalty of up to six months in jail.

Following Trump's executive order, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), called out the president's hypocrisy, saying, "If Trump wants to throw the book at people who commit ‘violent crime” while desecrating the American flag, why did he pardon people who on Jan. 6, 2021, violently assaulted our cops with American flags-on-poles, calling them heroes and rewarding their bloody flag desecration?”

Nick Place, one of Carey's attorneys, says Trump's order is questionable, saying it directed authorities “to find ways to punish people for exercising their First Amendment rights, specifically their First Amendment right to burn an American flag. And that’s exactly what the Department of Justice went out and did here in this case.”

Carey's defense team also says that "the government is overreaching by incorrectly citing regulations broadly used to police conduct in 'wilderness areas.'"

"This was a pointed protest in a location that I thought would be safe because there was nobody around. It was done on bricks," Carey says.

Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg did not hear oral arguments or rule on a pending defense motion to dismiss the case yet and has set another status hearing for Jan. 28.