Don Lemon asked a federal judge to dismiss criminal civil-rights charges against him related to his presence as a protest earlier this year at an anti-ICE protest in Minnesota. In a filing Friday, the former CNN anchor’s lawyers asserted the indictment of Lemon stemmed from Donald Trump‘s longstanding “animus” toward Lemon and violated the First Amendment.
“The record could not be more clear that Mr. Lemon has been a persistent target of President Trump’s ire before the events in Minnesota,” his lawyers wrote in a motion seeking to dismiss the charges. The filing said the Justice Department “acted on the President’s animus by filing unprecedented charges against a journalist for doing his job.”
Federal agents arrested Lemon in Los Angeles (where he was covering the Grammy Awards) on Jan. 29 in connection with his attendance at a Jan. 18 anti-ICE protest inside a church in St. Paul, Minnesota. On Jan. 30, a judge ordered him released. Lemon and several other journalists have been charged with violating the FACE Act, which prohibits people from intimidating or interfering with individuals’ constitutional right to the freedom of religion.
Trump’s animosity toward Lemon “is well documented, stretching back over a decade,” per the journalist’s lawyers, who said the DOJ charged Lemon “as punishment for his First Amendment protected reporting on protests related to Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota.”
