Don Lemon Pushes Back On Trump DOJ Official’s Threat That He’s “On Notice” For Coverage Of Anti-ICE Protest At Minnesota Church Service

Don Lemon is clapping back at the Department of Justice, after Harmeet Dhillon put the former CNN host on notice for joining a protest of a church pastor in Minnesota after it was revealed that he has been assisting ICE.

via: Deadline

Don Lemon said that he was doing an “act of journalism” when he covered an anti-ICE protest inside a St. Paul, MN church during services on Sunday, as a Justice Department official warned him that he was “on notice.”

“We were there chronicling protests,” Lemon said on Instagram on Monday. “Once the protest started in the church, we did an act of journalism, which was report on it and talk to the people who are involved, which included the pastor, members of the church and members of the organization. That’s it. It’s called journalism, First Amendment, all that stuff.”

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, head of the Justice Department Civil Rights Division, wrote a message to Lemon on X on Sunday evening that the First Amendment does “not protect your pseudo journalism of disrupting a prayer service. You are on notice!”

In an interview with podcaster Benny Johnson, Dhillon said that Lemon “has come out and said he knew exactly what was going to happen inside that facility. He went into the facility and then he began ‘committing journalism,’ as if that’s sort of a shield from being a part, an embedded part of a criminal conspiracy. It isn’t.”

Lemon livestreamed the protest, during which he said that he “had no affiliation” to the protest organization. “I didn’t even know they were going to this church until we followed them. We were there chronicling protests.”

During the livestream inside the church, Lemon told viewers, “I’m not going to get in the middle of it, because I’m not here as an activist. I’m here as a journalist.”

Dhillon has said that the DOJ is investigating the demonstration as a potential violation of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, or FACE Act, which prohibits “injuring, intimidating, or interfering with, or attempting to injure, intimidate, or interfere” with people trying to access reproductive health services or a place of religious worship. She also cited the Ku Klux Klan Act, which passed during Reconstruction and was intended to enforce civil rights laws.

The protesters were demonstrating in the church on their belief that one of its officials worked for ICE.

Lemon also responded to a social media post from Nicki Minaj, who referred to him with an anti-gay slur and called for his arrest. “Stop talking about s— for which you know nothing about,” Lemon said.