Don Lemon was released from jail on his own recognizance and without entering a plea Friday afternoon after being arrested in Los Angeles on two charges related to his participation in the January 18 riot that disrupted a religious service at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Prior to his arrest, Lemon was making the media rounds to defend his behavior (as he tells it, he was simply “committing journalism”) and thumb his nose in the face of critics. And the former CNN anchor has not missed a beat since, attending the Grammys Sunday night and stopping by Jimmy Kimmel Live on Monday for a pity party with a fellow aggrieved media personality.
On Tuesday’s show, Megyn was joined by National Review’s Rich Lowry and Charles C.W. Cooke to discuss Lemon’s sit-down with Kimmel and what the media has gotten wrong about this story.
The Interview
In case you couldn’t guess how the 15-minute interview was going to go, Kimmel introduced Lemon by taking a swipe at – you guessed it – President Donald Trump. “Our first guest tonight is a longtime TV and digital newsman who on Thursday night was arrested for committing journalism, which is a very serious crime under our current administration,” he said. “Joining us now to share all the incredible details, please welcome Don Lemon.”
The victimization began immediately upon Lemon taking the stage:
KIMMEL: Well, thank you for being here. I hope you’re okay. I hope you’re mentally okay after what happened to you. How are you?
LEMON: I don’t know.
KIMMEL: You don’t know?
LEMON: No, that’s a, that’s a really– that’s an honest answer. I don’t know. I mean, I’m okay. But I’m not going to let them steal my joy. But this is very serious. I mean, these are federal criminal charges.
Kimmel claimed Lemon is “not a favorite of Donald Trump’s going back to your days at CNN” and offered a very vague overview of the behavior that led to him being charged with FACE and Klan Act violations. When the late night host asked Lemon whether there is a difference between protesters entering the church and “a credentialed journalist like yourself” doing the deed, Lemon clammed up, claiming there “a lot” he couldn’t say because the case is ongoing.
But he was quick to try to differentiate himself from his fellow agitators. “What I will say is that I’m not a protester. I went there to do– to be a journalist. I went there to chronicle and document and record what was happening,” he explained. “I was following that one group around. And so that is what I did. I reported on them… But I do think that there is a difference between a protester and a journalist.”
Lemon went on to claim that, through his attorney, he offered to turn himself into authorities when he first heard rumblings about charges but they never received a call back. Instead, he said he was arrested in L.A. late Thursday night when he returned to his hotel after attending some pre-Grammy parties.
He claimed he was “jostled from behind” by law enforcement trying to put him in handcuffs as he waited for the elevator. From there, Lemon recounted being taken to “a holding place in the federal courthouse,” where he had got a “mug shot, fingerprints, the whole nine yards.” He said he proceeded to spend the next 12 hours or so in the holding cell while waiting for his court appearance.
It was during one of his escorted trips to the bathroom that Lemon said he realized what a, in Kimmel’s words, “very, very big story” his arrest had become.
LEMON: I had no idea. I had a little bit of an idea when… I asked to use the restroom… sort of early in the morning. I didn’t have a watch or anything, so I didn’t know. So. I go out and they open the door to the room where the agents, you know, they’re housed or their office, and there was CNN on a monitor and on the thing I could see, ‘Former CNN Anchor Don Lemon Arrested in Los Angeles.’ And I said to the guys… ‘Is that happening a lot?’ He goes, ‘You’ve been on all morning.’ And he says, ‘This is a big deal.’
But I still didn’t know how big a deal it was, Jimmy. I swear to you. I walked out. My attorney said to me on the phone, finally, when I got out. He said, ‘I prepared a statement. You can rewrite it and edit it, but you need to deliver the statement.’ I’m like, ‘Deliver it to who? Like, what are you talking about?’ They said, ‘The people who are waiting outside.’ And so my husband and I walk out and I see this, like, I mean, I don’t know how many reporters and paparazzi and helicopters. I had no idea.
And then, much like his persistent calls for people to “like” and “subscribe to” his YouTube channel throughout his livestream of the church riot, Lemon revealed his true motivations once again.
“I asked my husband, I said, ‘What happened with the channel today?’ Because I was concerned about– that’s my livelihood, and my channel, and my viewers,” he recalled to Kimmel. “And he said, ‘Your channel has been going all day.’”
Missing the Point
Cooke said the interview underscores what he sees as a larger problem with how Lemon’s arrest has been characterized by the corporate media and left. “[It’s] the belief that the First Amendment treats journalists who have press passes and W-2s differently than it does anyone else… that it is a protection of the press. It is not,” he said. “The First Amendment applies no differently to Walter Cronkite than to some guy with an iPhone.”
That is the very point, Megyn noted, that Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon made on The Megyn Kelly Show last month when she explained why the Department of Justice was seeking charges against Lemon. “[She said] you don’t have a magic invisibility cloak just because you declare yourself a journalist while you are participating in a crime,” Megyn recalled. “There are laws that apply to us – even though we’re journalists – and we all know that.”
While Cooke said he does not think there is an open and shut case against Lemon, he said there is no question the charges against him are justified. “I think it will be 50-50. I do think there are strong defenses, and I think that the facts will be difficult to parse out in front of a jury,” he explained. “I just think the idea that there is something intrinsically wrong about this [prosecution] is crazy.”
Lowry agreed. “The whole thing is so moronic and wrong… [and] maybe he gets off. But if he gets off, it still doesn’t really mitigate the offense,” he said. “This was a terrible thing to do. It was a violation of our civil society and other people’s rights, and he should be ashamed.”
And yet ‘shame’ seems to be the last thing on Lemon’s mind at the moment. “But I’m sure he is enjoying it,” Lowry concluded. “Because it is [bringing] more attention and he is getting celebrated by all the people he cares about, whether it’s [The View] or Jimmy Kimmel.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Cooke and Lowry by tuning in to episode 1,244 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.