Welp, it happened — the Trump administration has made good on its promise to arrest journalist Don Lemon over his coverage of an anti-ICE protest that disrupted the Sunday service at a St. Paul church where a local ICE director serves as a pastor. Despite the fact that a magistrate judge reviewed the evidence and rejected charges against Lemon and four other people, and the fact that an appeals court also rejected the DOJ’s push for an arrest warrant for Lemon, federal agents took the former CNN anchor into custody in Los Angeles on Thursday where he was covering the Grammy Awards, according to his attorney, Abbe Lowell.
“Don Lemon was taken into custody by federal agents last night in Los Angeles, where he was covering the Grammy awards,” Lowell said in a statement Friday, CNN reported. “Don has been a journalist for 30 years, and his constitutionally protected work in Minneapolis was no different than what he has always done. The First Amendment exists to protect journalists whose role it is to shine light on the truth and hold those in power accountable.”
“Instead of investigating the federal agents who killed two peaceful Minnesota protesters, the Trump Justice Department is devoting its time, attention and resources to this arrest, and that is the real indictment of wrongdoing in this case,” she continued. “This unprecedented attack on the First Amendment and transparent attempt to distract attention from the many crises facing this administration will not stand. Don will fight these charges vigorously and thoroughly in court.”
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi also announced the arrests of three others, Trahern Jeen Crews, Georgia Fort, and Jamael Lydell Lundy.
The DOJ first attempted to charge eight people, including Lemon, last week. A magistrate judge rejected those charges against five of the people including Lemon, saying that there was insufficient evidence to charge. The judge, however, encouraged prosecutors to take the case to a grand jury and seek and indictment.
It is highly unusual for the Justice Department to criminally charge a reporter, though it is not without precedent. Those cases are heavily scrutinized before the decision to bring charges is made, and often face extended legal battles over whether the reporter is protected by the First Amendment before the case makes it to trial.
Still, senior DOJ officials immediately, and publicly, asserted that Lemon would face charges after the incident at the Minnesota church. Lemon did not have a right to be on the church’s private property, they’ve said, adding that interrupting a church service may have impeded in the churchgoers’ constitutional rights to express their religion.
For those of us who are not experts in the inner workings of our justice system, it might seem strange that a magistrate judge rejected criminal charges against Lemon and some of the protesters for lack of evidence, only to encourage prosecutors to seek a federal indictment from a grand jury, despite said lack of evidence. Then again, under this topsy-turvy-ass administration, up is down, right is left, water might just be dry, and a reporter covering a protest that was going to happen with or without him is not covered under the First Amendment.
But here’s one question for the Trump administration regarding Lemon’s arrest, that of the protesters, including the three who were previously charged: to what end?
I mean, we all know the Trump administration is using this church protest as a dog and pony show to appease its perpetually aggrieved white Christian nationalist base, which is why the White House digitally altered the arrest photo of protest organizer Nekima Levy Armstrong to make it look like she was in distress when she was actually quite stoic and stone-faced.
And we know tossing Lemon on the fire is part of that effort, which is also likely meant to distract people from the hot water the administration has put itself in over its propaganda-laced responses to the killings of Minnesota residents Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good, both of whom were fatally shot by federal immigration agents, who video footage shows they posed no real threat to.
But at the end of the day, what are these arrests going to do for this administration? After all, no one at Cities Church in St. Paul was injured, and having a single service interrupted is hardly the religious persecution that Bondi and the MAGA-fied DOJ are making it out to be. So, it’s not like any of those arrested are likely to see any significant penalties for their “crimes” if any of them are convicted at all. As I wrote previously, “Trump’s Department of Justice has been unsuccessful every time they’ve tried to weaponize the federal court system against the MAGA messiah’s political rivals, or anti-ICE protesters that didn’t cause any physical or otherwise serious harm to anyone.
And whether the DOJ is able to get convictions or not, this use of the justice system for transparent political posturing is not going to make the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown any less unpopular than it already is both in the U.S. and abroad, and it certainly won’t do anything for President Donald Trump’s steadily declining approval ratings.
Moves like these might get the Trump administration’s cultists to cheer and gloat, but to everyone else, it makes the administration look desperate for a win at a time of steady losses. Imagine the self-inflicted humiliation it will suffer if these cases only result in more prosecutorial losses.
This entire display of obvious lawfare would be shameful if the MAGA administration had the capacity for shame.
But it doesn’t, and it proves it doesn’t every single day.
