Don Lemon was arrested by the feds late Thursday for his role in the now infamous agitator-led anti-ICE ‘protest’ at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, during a Sunday service on January 18.
According to reports, Lemon has been charged with two federal crimes. The first, conspiracy against rights, also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act, is a felony. And he has also been charged with violating the FACE Act, which makes it a crime to “by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction, intentionally injures, intimidates or interferes with or attempts to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person lawfully exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship.”
Last week, a magistrate judge approved charges against three others in the ‘protest’ – Nekima Levy Armstrong, Chauntyll Allen, and William Kelly – but declined to approve charges against Lemon. But Friday morning, Deputy White House Chief of Staff James Blair said that a federal grand jury had, in fact, indicted the former CNN anchor.
What Happened
As Megyn explained on Friday’s Megyn Kelly Show, Lemon’s arrest should not come as a surprise to anyone because “every video of the incident looks like a textbook example of FACE Act violation.”
“By all accounts, those demonstrators absolutely terrorized the congregation,” she explained. “We learned from an affidavit filed in the investigation into what happened that day that one parishioner said the agitators prevented them from getting to their children, one thought it was a shooting, and others weren’t able to leave. One woman fell and was injured.”
Lemon, meanwhile, has claimed he was “committing journalism” when he entered the church with the agitators, but his own livestream of the day suggests otherwise. “He seemed to know all about what the organizers were planning to do inside the church,” she noted. “On the way to the location, he accidentally said the word ‘church.'”
But there is one portion of Lemon’s coverage that Megyn said could be crucial. “About 30 seconds after you heard the protest begin, he detailed knowing the protesters were there about the pastor apparently being a member of ICE – the exact reason for the protest that he tried to argue he didn’t know anything about,” she noted.
The Narrative
Lemon’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, said in a statement that his client was taken into custody by federal agents in Los Angeles, where he was covering the Grammy Awards. “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,” Lowell said. “This unprecedented attack on the First Amendment and transparent attempt to distract attention from the many crises facing this administration will not stand.”
And the messaging has been similar from Lemon’s supporters, who have flooded social media to continue to claim he had a First Amendment right to do what he did. “These are liars. These are agenda-driven spin masters because actual journalists know full well you are not allowed to do this,” Megyn said. “If I could tell you the number of times that I have been out covering news with my cameras and something happened… and I wanted to go onto private property to get the best shot but I couldn’t because we did not have permission, we’d be here all day.”
She noted her coverage of the rape case against the Duke lacrosse team early in her career as one such example. “We found the accuser [when] no one else had found her… We found her house. She was in it. We knew she was in there,” Megyn recalled. “Do you think I would have loved to go in there with my photog and get a picture of her on camera? You bet I would have. Why didn’t I? Because it’s not legal. That’s private property. And when I put it to you in terms of a person’s home, it is very easy to understand, right?”
As Megyn explained, barging into the woman’s home and taking her picture “would be a criminal act of trespass” and “every news person… out there right now saying, ‘This is an outrage; he did nothing wrong,’ absolutely knows this, but they are ignoring it.”
And she believes Lemon’s transgressions go beyond trespassing. “Don Lemon is in so much more trouble than that because he did not just trespass into somebody’s private property, which a church is,” Megyn said. “He made the colossal blunder of doing it into a house of worship in the middle of a religious service.”
“That was a colossal blunder because now you’re talking about rock solid rights that the church goers have under the Constitution and under federal statutes not to be bothered while they’re worshiping,” she added. “And Don Lemon is either too stupid or too rude to know that.”
The Analysis
On Friday’s show, Megyn was joined by Mike Davis, founder of Article III Project, and Bill Shipley, author of Shipwreckedcrew’s Port-O-Call on Substack, and Michael Knowles, host of The Michael Knowles Show, for complete coverage of the arrest and what comes next. Keep scrolling for all the analysis…
Breaking Down the Arrest
Megyn reacts to the breaking news that Lemon was arrested on charges of violating the Klan Act and FACE Act, why claiming to be a journalist offers no legal protection for what he did inside the church, and more.
All the Legal Angles
Davis and Shipley join Megyn to discuss why Lemon has no First Amendment defense after his arrest, the media’s false spin about the charges, what to expect from the indictment, and more.
Don Lemon Enters ‘Find Out’ Phase
Megyn and Knowles talk about how the arrest means Lemon is in the “find out” phase of his career, his absurd statements and the strange defenses of his contemptible actions, and more.
You can check out Megyn’s full analysis by tuning in to episode 1,242 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Channel (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.