Former CNN anchor Don Lemon moved Friday to have criminal civil rights charges against him thrown out in federal court in Minnesota, arguing that prosecutors are pursuing the case as an act of unlawful retaliation.
In the filing, Lemon’s legal team said President Trump’s hostility toward the journalist “is well documented” and dates back more than 10 years.
The attorneys claimed the Justice Department brought the case to punish Lemon for First Amendment-protected reporting on protests tied to Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota.
Lemon and several other journalists were charged along with protesters under the FACE Act, a federal law that bars intimidation or interference with people exercising their constitutional right to religious practice. Prosecutors also accused them of felony conspiracy to interfere with individuals’ religious rights.
The motion cited public remarks from senior current and former Justice Department officials, as well as Mr. Trump, that Lemon’s lawyers say singled him out before the indictment. Among the officials referenced were then-Attorney General Pam Bondi and Harmeet Dhillon, who serves as assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division.
The Justice Department first attempted to bring the case against Lemon through a criminal complaint, but a magistrate judge rejected that request after finding insufficient probable cause.
Prosecutors then made the unusual move of seeking intervention from the chief judge and later the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. After those efforts were unsuccessful, the department presented the matter to a grand jury, which returned an indictment.
“Upon hearing rumors of an indictment, counsel for Mr. Lemon contacted the Department of Justice to coordinate Mr. Lemon’s self-surrender,” Lemon’s attorneys wrote.
“Instead of arranging the normal self-surrender after a charge would be filed, in what can only be described as an effort to punish and humiliate Mr. Lemon, the government ignored the request to arrange an orderly surrender and chose to deputize agents to his Los Angeles hotel—where he was covering the music industry’s annual awards show—to arrest him at midnight.”
The White House subsequently mocked Lemon in a post on X that read, “When life gives you lemons” and included a photo and information about his arrest.
“Perhaps recognizing that Mr. Lemon’s presence as a journalist was protected by the First Amendment, the government’s case agent falsely claimed in numerous sworn affidavits that Mr. Lemon affirmatively joined the protestors by ‘chanting with agitators and obstructing parishioners’ path of travel,'” his lawyers wrote.
