Don Lemon made it official in a Minnesota courtroom on Friday, entering a not guilty plea against federal charges that have sparked a massive debate over the First Amendment.
The case involves Lemon’s coverage of a January 18 protest at a St. Paul church, where he was reporting as a freelancer. Despite the government’s claims that his presence was criminal, Lemon stood his ground outside the court, framing the case as a direct hit on the media. “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. The First Amendment, freedom of the press, is the bedrock of our democracy.”
The legal battle is already getting messy. Prosecutors revealed they grabbed Lemon’s phone during his arrest and are now using a search warrant to comb through it, a move his lawyer, Abbe Lowell, called a potential “over-execution.” The defense is calling the government’s tactics “highly unusual,” noting that a judge had actually refused to sign arrest warrants before the administration took the case to a grand jury.
While Attorney General Pam Bondi described the protest as a “coordinated attack,” the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) hit back, calling the prosecution an attempt to “criminalize and threaten press freedom under the guise of law enforcement.” The NABJ added that “a government that responds to scrutiny by targeting the messenger is not protecting the public, it is attempting to intimidate it.
In a motion filed late Friday, Lemon’s legal team labeled the indictment a “nakedly political” and “unconstitutional mess.” They argued that this kind of prosecution is something usually reserved for dictatorships. “In the United States of America, we do not prosecute journalists for doing their job. That happens in Russia, China, Iran and other authoritarian regimes. And yet the government sold this unconstitutional mess to the grand jury,” the motion states. They also pointed out that local prosecutors in Minnesota didn’t even put their names on the indictment, suggesting the orders came from the top.
Even the government’s own civil rights officials admit they are testing out new legal theories. Harmeet Dhillon noted that the statutes being used were never originally intended for this purpose. “In all these years up until I was the assistant attorney general for civil rights, nobody ever used that houses of worship part to prosecute protesters or criminals blocking access to a house of worship, so we’ve started to do that,” Dhillon has said.
Through it all, Lemon says the support from the public and his peers has been overwhelming. “I’d like to thank everyone again for their support,” Lemon said. “To my colleagues, countless journalists around the world … my family and my friends, you all have showed up for me in a real way, and I am extremely grateful for that. I feel it. I feel it. I feel it.”
