Not surprisingly, Don Lemon’s arrest on Friday in connection with his coverage of an anti-ICE protest earlier this month aroused strong reactions from fellow members of the media.
Lemon filmed protesters who stormed a Sunday morning service at Cities Church in St. Paul on Jan. 18. Demonstrators who chose the church alleged one of its pastors, David Easterwood, was also a top ICE official in the state.
After the protest, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon called Lemon’s coverage of the protest “pseudo journalism” and said he was “on notice.”
The DOJ then tried to charge Lemon for being on the scene, only to be thwarted by a magistrate judge in Minnesota who refused to sign off on the charges.
That changed on Friday when Attorney General Pam Bondi announced the former CNN anchor’s arrest on X.
CNN media analyst Brian Stelter called it “a First Amendment test with multiple dimensions,” and many of Lemon’s other former colleagues and fellow journalists were also outraged at the arrest.
Jake Tapper noted that Lemon’s arrest happened only after two judges previously rejected the efforts of the DOJ to indict the newsman.
Other journalists were also outraged by the attack on the First Amendment.
But Lemon’s arrest wasn’t uniformly condemned by his fellow media members.
Many conservative journalists and podcasters seemed OK with Lemon’s arrest, freedom of speech be damned.
But former Fox News journalist Gretchen Carlson warned MAGA journalists that Lemon’s arrest “has nothing to do with politics,” and asked if they would “want the tables turned when they could all be arrested with a democratic administration.”
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story listed the incorrect date for the anti-ICE church protest.