Chicago man gets 3 years for possession of 'Trump gun'

Before the sentence was handed down, Bains stood in court and apologized for his actions, saying he was tired of the “revolving door” of jail and determined to do better for his family. “I got seven kids, and they haven’t had the best lifestyle,” he said. “It’s just — you know. It’s sickening.”

Bains pleaded guilty in February to possession of a gun by a felon. The guilty plea came about a year after his trial ended in a mistrial due to late disclosure of law enforcement interviews of Johnson, who had claimed Bains stole the “Trump gun” from him in 2020.

Before the judge granted the mistrial, Johnson testified he’d bought the Trump gun at Eagle Sporting Range in Oak Forest on July 30, 2020, just a few months before it was found under Bains’ mattress.

Asked why he bought that particular firearm, Johnson testified it was because of its unusual Trump markings.

“It just stood out to me,” Johnson told the jury, according to a transcript of his testimony in court records. “I never seen a gun like it.”

Bains’ cousin also testified that she had seen the gun in their house and that everyone knew about it because it had “Trump’s face.”

In asking for leniency, Bains’ attorneys, Steven Greenberg and Curtis Lovelace, painted Johnson as a liar and gun trafficker who was given immunity by prosecutors even though he admitted selling more than a dozen weapons, including one linked to a weapon used to shoot and injure a Chicago firefighter.

In particular, the defense said Johnson’s story about what happened to the Trump gun changed so many times he could not be believed. Bains’ attorneys also made a not-so-subtle jab at the former president in a recent sentencing filing.

“Circling back to the Trump theme of this case, a lie does not become the truth simply because it is repeated (“the election was stolen”),” Greenberg and Lovelace wrote, referencing Trump’s unfounded claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged.

Greenberg and Lovelace wrote it’s “disconcerting” that the U.S. attorney’s office “chose to give a scoundrel like Johnson immunity for littering the streets of Chicago with firearms, including at least one that was used to seriously injure a Chicago fireman, and in doing so embraces his lies.”

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