Former CNN anchor Don Lemon, now an independent journalist, pleaded not guilty Friday to charges linked to his coverage of a protest at the church of a federal immigration official in Minnesota.
Abbe Lowell, Lemon’s attorney, said the defense wants to see transcripts of a grand jury’s deliberation about the case, arguing that prosecutors took an “unusual” path to charge Lemon, according to NBC News.
Before the indictment, a judge initially declined to sign a criminal complaint against Lemon, sources told Politico and The New York Times. These sources said Attorney General Pam Bondi and other senior Justice Department officials were enraged over the decision, and vowed to find other avenues for Lemon’s case.
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“We have serious concerns about the application of these statutes to our client,” Lowell said Friday.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Douglas L. Micko in St. Paul said Lemon is free to travel unless he violates any laws.
Lemon has been a persistent critic of President Donald Trump, who has referred to the journalist as a “loser” and “the dumbest man on television.”
Speaking outside the court on Friday, Lemon depicted the case as a fight over the First Amendment’s guarantees of a free press.
“I wanted to say this isn’t just about me, this is about all journalists, especially in the United States,” Lemon said.
“For more than 30 years, I’ve been a journalist, and the power and protection of the First Amendment has been the underpinning of my work,” he said. “The First Amendment, freedom of the press, is the bedrock of our democracy.”
Lemon’s arrest and fallout
Lemon and another journalist, Georgia Fort, were charged after covering protests on Jan. 18 at Cities Church in St. Paul, where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official serves as a pastor. Lemon followed a group of protestors into the church. Protestors chanted “ICE out” and Lemon tried to interview church leaders. Lemon has maintained that he was not participating in the protest, but documenting it as a journalist.
The arrests of Lemon and Fort on Jan.30 was condemned by press advocacy organizations. The National Association of Black Journalists said in a statement it was “outraged and deeply alarmed.”
“As journalists, our first obligation is to bear witness and to inform,” NABJ President Errin Haines said. “When those obligations are met with detention or prosecution instead of protection, we must ask: what message are we sending about who gets to report and who gets silenced? A free press, not a penalized one, is essential to democracy; especially, when coverage intersects with contentious public issues.”
Justice Department officials have defended the arrests. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, told One American News Network on Feb. 6 that “a third of the people who were arrested so far claimed to be journalists.”
“Frankly, they could all call themselves journalists and it wouldn’t make a difference as to whether they broke the law,” Dhillon said.
Bobby Block, executive director of the First Amendment Foundation, previously told Straight Arrow News that the Justice Department’s claim is a slippery slope.
The public’s perception of the industry has dropped, and definitions about what is considered journalism have changed, Block said, noting that people have moved toward Substack, YouTube and other platforms.
“The kind of outlets that distribute, that gather news and disseminate facts and opinion are changing and, therefore, we have to,” Block said. “Our concept of that has to change.”
