Remember the pole climber on Broad Street after the Phillies clinched the NLCS? This guy is Sean Hagan and he put on a performance of a lifetime catching seven beers and chugging them within 20 minutes while cops and Phillies fans looked on:

When he finally came down, he was arrested and released. But instead of a simple disorderly conduct or public intoxication, he got charged with three felonies and two misdemeanors, including “inciting a riot” –

The judge even threatened to keep him in jail through the World Series, according to Stephanie Farr at the Inky:

“Hagan said he turned himself in and spent Wednesday night in a holding cell at police headquarters. A judge threatened to keep him incarcerated through the World Series, he said, but he was released Thursday afternoon.”

Nowhere in that video did it look like there was anything close to a riot. No fires. No flipping of cop cars. Just Phillies fans cheering on one of their own like they did in 2008 and 2018. Well, good news is Sean Hagan got the charges dropped. The crazy part is there was a realistic chance of him actually doing jail time because the DA’s office didn’t like his politics.

Victor Fiorillo at Philly Mag had more on that:

Last week, Hagan faced a judge for a preliminary hearing on the charges brought by the office of District Attorney Larry Krasner, charges which, shockingly to some, included felonies like rioting and conspiracy. (Hagan and <criminal defense attorney Chuck> Peruto theorized that Krasner’s office hit him with such serious charges after scanning his social media accounts, which make it pretty clear he’s a big fan of Donald Trump and that he rallied in Washington D.C. on that infamous date of January 6th; court documents showed that investigators did, in fact, use Hagan’s social media accounts as part of the case.)

On Friday, the judge dismissed all the charges against Hagan due to lack of evidence.

Hold on a second. Hitting someone with more serious charges because you (allegedly) don’t like their politics is pretty fucked up right? Like that’s gotta be an overreach of power from the DA’s office.

Listen, I don’t really see eye to eye with anyone who went to the protests on January 6th, but I think we can agree as long as he wasn’t part of the group that stormed the capital or did anything illegal it’s no different than any other protests. It would be like having a Republican DA throw the book at this guy because they saw he was at a BLM protest. I mean we’re talking about trying to lock a guy up who climbed a fucking pole to celebrate the Phillies making it to the World Series for the first time in 13 years. Because he likes Trump? If that’s the case, nobody’s Delco uncle better get any ideas when the Eagles win the Super Bowl or the prisons are going to be overcrowded. Does that mean the pole climber technically was going to become a political prisoner?