On January 18, Don Lemon was doing his job by covering an anti-ICE protest inside a St. Paul, MN church. When a DOJ official warned he was “on notice,” the former CNN anchor explained he was only doing an “act of journalism.”
On Sunday evening, Donald Trump appointee Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon messaged Don via X. AAG Dhillon is the head of the Justice Department Civil Rights Division. She claimed the First Amendment does “not protect your pseudo journalism of disrupting a prayer service. You are on notice!”
Don Lemon defends his “act of journalism”
Furthermore, the official told a podcaster that Don “knew exactly what was going to happen inside that facility. He went in [and] began ‘committing journalism,’ as if that’s sort of a shield from being … an embedded part of a criminal conspiracy. It isn’t.”
Even though he denied having any “affiliation” with the protestors, Don livestreamed the incident. “I didn’t even know they were going to this church until we followed them,” he said. “We were there chronicling protests.”
“I’m not going to get in the middle of it,” Don told viewers during the livestream. “I’m not here as an activist; I’m here as a journalist.”
According to reports, one of the church’s pastors is also an ICE agent, which was the cause of the protest.
The Assistant Attorney General has instructed the DOJ to investigate the demonstration as a violation of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act. The FACE Act protects people trying to access reproductive health services or place of religious worship. It also prohibits “injuring, intimidating, or interfering with, or attempting to injure, intimidate, or interfere” with those people. In addition, the AAG cited the Ku Klux Klan Act, which was passed during the Reconstruction era and was intended to enforce civil rights laws.
TELL US – DO YOU THINK DON DID ANYTHING WRONG?
