Don Lemon revealed to Jimmy Kimmel Live! viewers exactly what went down when he was arrested by federal agents.
The former CNN journalist attracted the MAGA world’s fury when he reported on a January 18 anti-ICE protest that interrupted a church service in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Although Lemon has maintained that he only entered the church as a journalist, not as one of the protesters, the Justice Department charged him with “conspiracy to deprive rights and interfering with First Amendment rights.”
Lemon recalled to Jimmy Kimmel how he had returned to his hotel in Los Angeles on early Friday morning after attending a Grammys pre-party to find himself suddenly under arrest by multiple officers.
“I was walking up to the room and I pressed the elevator button, and all of a sudden I feel myself being jostled, and people trying to grab me and put me in handcuffs,” Lemon explained.
“And I said, ‘What are you doing here?’” Lemon recalled. “They said, ‘We came to arrest you.’ I said, ‘Who are you?’ Finally, they identified. I said, ‘If you are who you are, where’s the warrant?’ They didn’t have the warrant.”
Lemon told a stunned Kimmel, “They had to wait for someone from outside, an FBI guy, to come in to show me a warrant on a cell phone.”
Reading the warrant was at first a struggle for Lemon, as his glasses had fallen over in the skirmish.
“I’m like, ‘I can’t read that,’” Lemon said. “So they had to pick my glasses up, and I read it, and still, ‘What does that mean?’”
Lemon noted that there “had to” have been at least a “dozen” people sent over to arrest him, expressing frustration because he had already offered to turn himself in peacefully.
Lemon viewed the Trump administration’s apparent choice to ignore his offer to self-report as a deliberate, malicious act:
“They want to embarrass you. They want to intimidate you. They want to instill fear, and so that’s why they did it that way,” Lemon said.
Earlier Monday evening, Attorney-General Pam Bondi vowed on Fox News to continue her case against the former CNN star.
“He was fired from CNN,” Bondi said. “Anyone who has a camera then would have a license to attack a church.” She added, “Doesn’t matter if you’re a failed journalist with a camera in your hand, you can’t do it.”
