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Don Lemon has been squeezed by the feds.
Arrested in Los Angeles, the ex-CNN anchor has been charged after a shameful incident at a St. Paul, Minnesota, church where a group of ant-ICE lunatics interrupted Sunday services.
Lemon faces charges of conspiracy and interfering with the First Amendment rights of worshipers.
Predictably, his arrest has triggered all the selective free speech advocates to come out screaming that our fundamental rights are being eroded. Yet journalists have been harassed and targeted for much less.
“The FBl’s arrest of our former CNN colleague Don Lemon raises profoundly concerning questions about press freedom and the First Amendment,” CNN said in a statement.
Celebrities and scholars like Josh Gad, Kathy Griffin, Andy Cohen and Billy Baldwin are among those who have fired off statements of support.
That boob Lemon has now become a martyr.
Dios mio!
All of his supporters are spouting the usual words from their Trump resistance glossary, calling it fascism and authoritarianism.
Too bad most of these have lost their meaning and their sting, since the left throws them around with impunity.
But a free press? Well that still means something thankfully.
The First Amendment is sacred, but it doesn’t just guarantee freedom of the press. It also promises the right of people to worship freely.
Lemon has acted like his journalist press “badge” is a force field that provides all kinds of immunity.
He is most definitely guilty of being an utter tool and victimhood enthusiast, regularly crying that any criticism of him is because he is black and gay.
But did he conspire with the rabid anti-ICE agitators who burst into a Cities Church earlier this month, shattering peaceful Sunday services?
He certainly seemed gleeful as he embedded with the so-called resistance. “I can’t tell you exactly what they’re doing,” he said, introducing the head of the group, activist Nekima Levy Armstrong. He greeted her with a giant kiss on the cheek.
He then said he was turning the camera off “because they’re giving some critical information here. But…there we go.”
And there they went, storming into the church, screaming “ICE out,” yelling in churchgoers faces, allegedly blocking parents from reaching their children in classrooms and reducing frightened children to tears.
They chose that church because there were rumors someone high up at the church was potentially affiliated with ICE.
As the chaos played out, Lemon interviewed the pastor, who called the invasion “unacceptable and shameful.” He even asked them to leave.
Still, Lemon persisted. He didn’t act as an observer, instead he lectured the pastor. Microphone in hand, he straight up badgered the pastor, lecturing him about how there is “freedom of speech and freedom to assemble and protest.”
He had the stones to ask him if he even tried to speak to the unhinged invaders “as Christians?”
During his sermon to the church leader, Lemon made sure to clarify, “I’m a Christian.”
In other interviews with shellshocked parishioners, he explained why the protesters were angry.
To me, he acted as the group’s mouthpiece, not as a detached news gatherer.
Then, once the backlash grew, he claimed he had “no affiliations with that organization.”
Now that he is accused of being party to preventing people from exercising their First Amendment rights, he’s asserting his to wiggle out of trouble.
If Lemon had done the same with a group barging into a mosque or an abortion clinic, there would be crickets from the so-called democracy defenders.
It’s ironic that just before his arrest, he was giving career advice.
“Don’t try to be the old traditional journalist of yesteryear. It doesn’t play anymore. Blaze your own trail,” Lemon told journalist Nya Etienne during a pre-Grammys party.
Could he have blazed his own trail into legal trouble? We’ll have to wait and see how much juice the feds have against Lemon, who was reportedly indicted by a grand jury. And we’ll be watching.
In this brave new world of independent journalism, the lines can surely be blurred.
But you cannot be both a journalist and an agitator. You have a to pick one.
English (US)