The Trump Administration Arrested Don Lemon Like He Was a Fugitive Slave

"You don't need to be a legal scholar to know that arresting journalists for covering the news is a clear violation of the First Amendment. Lemon's arrest is also flatly illegal. Last week, the Trump administration went to a federal magistrate judge, Douglas L. Micko, to ask for an arrest warrant for Lemon. The judge refused. The Trump administration then appealed and lost that appeal."

"Georgia Fort is a prominent Black journalist based in Minnesota. She was out front in covering the George Floyd protests, and expertly covered the trial of his killer, Derek Chauvin. I have little doubt that this prior reporting is among the reasons she was targeted by the Trump administration. I know less about the activists: Crews is a cofounder of Black Lives Matter Minnesota, while Lundy works in the Hennepin County Attorney's office and recently announced his candidacy for the Minnesota state Senate."

"In her tweet proclaiming the arrests, Attorney General Pam Bondi said that the four were arrested "at my direction." Later reports suggested that the DOJ empaneled a federal grand jury that issued the arrest warrants for Lemon and Fort, but didn't explain the cause for arresting Crews and Lundy. Going to a grand jury to get an arrest warrant that a judge and appeals court previously denied"

The Department of Justice arrested journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort and activists Trahern Jeen Crews and Jamael Lydell Lundy after a protest inside a St. Paul church. The journalist arrests implicate First Amendment protections; a federal magistrate judge denied a warrant for Lemon and an appeal failed, yet federal agents arrested him in Los Angeles. Georgia Fort is a prominent Black Minnesota journalist. Crews cofounded Black Lives Matter Minnesota. Lundy works in the Hennepin County Attorney's office. Attorney General Pam Bondi said the arrests were "at my direction"; reports say a federal grand jury issued warrants for Lemon and Fort while the reasons for Crews and Lundy's arrests remain unclear.

Read at The Nation