Just-in-time delivery for Terese Grinnell Bastarache, a Loudon nurse accused of disrupting a 2021 Executive Council meeting, when the charges were dropped hours before her trial was scheduled to begin.
Gov. Chris Sununu was subpoenaed to testify at that trial. The Union Leader reported Monday that Concord District Court Judge Ryan C. Guptill quashed the subpoena in part because of “the exceedingly late service.”
Grinnell (the surname she went by two years ago) is a leader in New Hampshire’s We the People activist group. She was arrested along with eight others at the Executive Council meeting on October 13, 2021, where they were opposing $27 million in spending for the distribution and administration of the COVID vaccine.
Unruly We the People protestors shut down another Executive Council meeting two weeks earlier. No charges stemmed from that meeting.
According to Grinnell, the criminal complaint against her included the claim that she “Recklessly uttered the word ‘Amen.’”
Late Monday, state Rep. J.R. Hoell told NHJournal that Grinnell’s attorney called him to say he did not need to appear for testimony because charges were dropped.
“Yet again, we see the government pursuing a case for a year and a half where they had no rational legal basis for criminal charges,” Hoell said. “We’re seeing this more and more in D.C.-style politics, using the FBI to go after political adversaries.
“Never thought we’d see this in New Hampshire. But more than once in the past three years, we’ve seen First Amendment rights violated in favor of executive officials’ gain.”
Grinnell also released a statement.
“YES!!!! We still have court tomorrow, still encouraging everyone to please show up,” Grinnell wrote. “We have a big press release and a lot of fanfare, and we have a celebration activity that we are going to be doing afterward, so if you were planning on being there tomorrow, please still come you won’t regret it.”
