Former CNN anchor Don Lemon was arrested by federal agents in connection with his journalistic activities covering protests in Minnesota, according to his lawyer.
Lemon “was taken into custody by federal agents last night in Los Angeles, where he was covering the Grammy awards,” his attorney, Abbe Lowell, in a statement.
“Don has been a journalist for 30 years, and his constitutionally protected work in Minneapolis was no different than what he has always done,” Lowell said.
Lowell said the Justice Department has focused on arresting Lemon instead of investigating the federal agents who killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota earlier this month, calling it “the real indictment of wrongdoing in this case.”
Lemon, host of The Don Lemon Show, asserts that he was reporting as a journalist when he entered the Cities Church on Jan. 18, to observe a demonstration against the immigration crackdown in the area.
In a video, demonstrators can be seen entering St. Paul’s Cities Church after discovering that one of its pastors is an ICE official. While multiple people were charged, a federal appellate court last week declined to compel arrest warrants for Lemon and others, despite one judge finding probable cause.
The veteran journalist was in Los Angeles for the GRAMMY Awards when federal authorities and the FBI arrested Don Lemon on Thursday (Jan 29).
The arrest has already ignited fierce debate online, with ICE, MAGA circles, and the Trump administration all being pulled into the narrative.
Georgia Fort, an independent journalist who was also reporting during the church protest, was also arrested by Attorney Genereal Pamela Bondi’s direction.
“As a member of the press, I filmed the church protest a few weeks ago and now I’m being arrested for that,” Fort said in a video posted on Facebook. “It’s hard to understand how we have a Constitution, Constitutional rights, when we can just be arrested for being a member of the press.”