The arrests of journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort for simply covering a protest at a St. Paul, Minn., church personify the Trump regime’s accelerated sprint toward fascism. These arrests also remind us that no one has been more instrumental than Attorney General Pam Bondi in the assault on Americans’ civil liberties and the rule of law domestically and internationally.
Facing a political debacle that threatens to destroy the remainder of Trump’s presidency, the regime doubled down in a display of tyrannical petulance. Bondi, you may recall, failed twice to get warrants for Lemon’s and Fort’s arrests. The federal magistrate judge who reviewed the evidence refused to sign off on warrants for their arrest. The Justice Department’s bizarrely inappropriate effort to get the 8th Circuit to order the warrants’ signing (via a writ of mandamus) failed. Having struck out twice and earning a tongue-lashing from Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz, the Justice Department scrounged up a grand jury to indict Lemon and others.
Press advocacy organizations, Democratic leaders, Lemon’s former colleagues at CNN, and civil liberties groups denounced the attempt to criminalize core First Amendment activity. “Don Lemon’s arrest is an egregious violation of the 1st amendment. Reporters in America are free to view, document, and share information with the public,” said Public Citizen Co-President Lisa Gilbert in a written statement. “This arrest is a constitutional violation, an outrage, an authoritarian breach, and utterly appalling.”
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass was among the first to blast the Trump regime. “The arrest of journalists for going into a church in the course of reporting is shocking enough, but what’s even more alarming is that it’s no secret that Don Lemon is a Trump critic,” she said in a written statement.
After release without bond in Los Angeles on Friday afternoon, Lemon told reporters: “I have spent my entire career covering the news. I will not stop now.” He added, “There is no more important time than right now, this very moment, for a free and independent media that shines a light on the truth and holds those in power accountable.”
On his show that night, Lemon thanked former CNN colleagues but admonished legacy media journalists to stop enabling Trump:
[CNN journalists] need to tell Warner Brothers Discovery stop playing and get your hands out of the newsroom.
CBS needs to tell Paramount and David Ellison and whatever get out of our newsroom, get out of our journalism!
Bari Weiss, take your hands off of it! Let the journalists be the journalists…. [T]hat goes for every single corporate entity that owns a journalistic organization. Let the journalists be the journalists because they’re going to save our democracy!
Lemon reminded media and other institutions that “the way to stand up to a bully, to a tyrant is not to bend the knee. It’s not to acquiesce. It is to metaphorically punch them right in the nose.” He went on: “And you need to introduce not only Donald Trump and the folks who work for him and his administration but the corporate overlords and the gatekeepers, you need to introduce them to the word ‘no’!”
It is virtually inconceivable that the government will prevail in prosecution of Lemon and Fort. Seth Stern, director of advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation, wrote for The Guardian that the two statutes cited in the indictment — one prohibiting conspiracies to interfere with exercise of constitutional rights and the other barring intentional interference with religious worship — do not remotely apply.
“The journalists, of course, didn’t conspire with anyone to do anything nefarious. They simply documented news,” Stern explained. “It’s ironic that Lemon and Fort are accused of exactly what the Trump administration actually did — intimidating those who exercise core constitutional freedoms, like documenting news.” The other statute requires intent to interfere with a religious service, “not the lawful documentation of news events by journalists who neither plan protests nor participate in them.” He added, “Journalists follow the news — they don’t decide where it happens,” which explains why no attorney general ever “personally involved herself in pursuing vindictive criminal charges against journalists the administration doesn’t like, who merely covered a protest.”
In the short run, this unconstitutional outrage will make Lemon and Fort journalist rock stars, furthering their reach. But the ripple effect may be much greater.
The massive crowds that turned out on Friday for the ICE Out protests, including in Chicago, Minneapolis, New York, and Los Angeles, show that Americans will not be mollified by half-steps and vague promises (e.g., sending “Border Czar” Tom Homan to Minneapolis, reversing a decision to not conduct a civil rights investigation into Alex Pretti’s killing). Lemon’s and Fort’s arrests (coupled with the incomplete release of more heavily redacted Epstein files and the seizure of Fulton County, Ga., voting materials) will intensify the rage sweeping across the country, driving Trump’s horrid polling numbers even lower, and giving Bondi the edge in the “Cabinet secretary most deserving of impeachment” contest.
The latest arrests follow other vindictive prosecutions of Trump enemies (e.g., Letitia James, James Comey). She has refused (reversed in Pretti’s case) to investigate the regime’s killings or cooperate with local law enforcement; her DOJ attorneys habitually defy court orders; she dissembled about and delayed the still-incomplete release of the Trump-Epstein files; and she dispatched Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche to confer with Ghislaine Maxwell, who was then moved to cushy quarters, during the pedophile coverup. These dwarf any predecessor’s misdeeds. (She also repeatedly insults lawmakers and refuses to answer their questions during oversight hearings, purged DOJ attorneys believed by the Trump regime to be “disloyal” and solicited new hires based on loyalty to Trump’s agenda, and oversaw the Office of Legal Counsel’s bogus justifications for extrajudicial killings on the high seas and the invasion of Venezuela and the kidnapping of its president.)
Voters must hold accountable every senator who confirmed Bondi. Democrats should vow that once in the majority they will conduct exacting oversight of the Justice Department, pursue Bondi’s impeachment, and ensure she and her accessories are held accountable to the fullest extent of the law and face disbarment. Democrats must commit to a top-to-bottom housecleaning of DOJ and the imposition of stringent professional standards and penalties for misconduct.
Although it is too soon to say if Trump’s social media rant vowing to stay away from protests in major cities signals an actual retreat (deploying tear gas in Portland suggests ICE’s reliance on violence continues), Lemon’s and Fort’s arrests must not stand. All Americans must ensure that these cases mark the beginning of the end of Bondi’s disastrous career and the ruinous era of DOJ corruption.
The truth is Pam BONDI was, is, and will always be Trump's personal lawyer first and the American people's lawyer second. John Mitchell would be embarrassed at the naked politicization of the DOJ under BONDI & Blanche. I am chagrined that there are no senior members of the GOP willing to come out of their hidy holes and speak truth to the American people and to move expeditiously to initiate impeachment proceedings.
Trump appears more than a 1000 times in the Epstein files; how much smoke does there have to be to activate the nation's moral compass alarm? Oh, we don't have one anymore? I guess not.