‘Pyro-Activist’ Sets Fire to Trump Yard Sign, Attorney Minces No Words With What the Response Will Be

Well, we have reached the part of the presidential election campaign season where more people are putting bumper stickers on their cars and signs in their yards expressing who they support.

While it's expected that there might be some under-their-breath grumbling from neighbors and some fairly colorful language being yelled from people driving by in their vehicles, what's not expected nor acceptable is when people take their reactions to the extreme.

Unfortunately, that's exactly what happened in the case of Raleigh, North Carolina resident John Kane, who had a "Trump won" sign displayed prominently in his front yard up until a week ago when an unhinged bicyclist who didn't like the sign decided he was going to set fire to it.

Watch the video clips below. The first one is the man kicking the sign on August 12th, and the second one is of who is presumably the same person lighting it up three days later in the early morning hours, perhaps wrongly assuming that Kane didn't have a camera pointed right at him. Incredibly, the guy tried to move the American flag out of the way in what possibly was an attempt to make sure it didn't also catch on fire.

A third clip, seen towards the end of the video, appears to show the same individual back in February committing the same act:

Raleigh, North Carolina. Deranged liberal sets fire to a Trump 2024 yard sign.

Identify this biker and put him in jail. pic.twitter.com/dd7hRdUqr7
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) August 19, 2023

Kane's attorney, former Trump HHS Deputy General Counsel James Lawrence, vowed that justice would be coming.

"Regardless of what the Wake County District Attorney’s office does with this video, accountability is coming," Lawrence wrote on Twitter. "@Johnmkane1776, the owner of the burned sign in this video, has retained me to file a lawsuit against this pyro-activist once he is identified."

As it turned out, the alleged perp has reportedly been identified courtesy of Internet sleuths analyzing the Strava bicycle tracking app that he allegedly uses, and charges by the Wake DA are forthcoming:

A man seen in home surveillance footage lighting a political yard sign on fire last week will face misdemeanor criminal charges, Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman said Monday.
[...]
Freeman told The News & Observer on Monday evening that her office was in the process of serving the man seen in the video with two counts of misdemeanor injury to real property. A spokesperson for the Raleigh Police Department said earlier on Monday that it was aware of the incidents and was investigating them.

It was also reported that the DA's office would not identify the man publicly until they serve him the charges.

Kane noted on Twitter that Lawrence was in the process of filing a civil lawsuit against the alleged perp, which can be read here.

Lawrence later tweeted out the video Kane shared about why the incidents mattered and shouldn't be taken lightly considering his whole yard and home - where he and his young family reside, could have burned down as well. The attorney also correctly pointed out that Raleigh (like Charlotte, where this author resides) is not the same place they grew up in:

Proud to represent my fellow Raleigh native @johnmkane1776 who has decided to take a stand.

This isn’t the same city John and I grew up in, with easy-going people and sweet tea.

Raleigh is our hometown—not some some remake of Seattle. Charred political signs don’t belong here. https://t.co/F8ClOyxjGL
— James R. Lawrence III (@jlawrencenc) August 21, 2023

Sadly, this isn't the first time something like this has happened in America and it won't be the last, but hopefully, Kane taking action and pursuing charges - and the publicity this case has generated - will make others think twice before pulling dangerous and potentially deadly stunts like this one. It doesn't matter whether one agrees with him about the 2020 election or not, things like this should just not be happening.