Pam Bondi Has Don Lemon Arrested for Reporting on Peaceful Protest

In what may be a record-breaking seven-hundred-millionth attack on the First Amendment since Trump re-entered office, Attorney General Pam Bondi has ordered the arrest of journalist Don Lemon for covering an ICE protest at a church in Minnesota.

On Friday morning, Bondi tweeted that “at my direction,” federal agents arrested Lemon—the former CNN anchor turned independent journalist—who live-streamed demonstrators entering Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, on January 18. Protesters chanted, “ICE Out” and “Justice for Renee Good,” referring to the 37-year-old who was murdered by an ICE agent on January 7.

Protesters chose Cities Church because its pastor, David Easterwood, is reportedly the acting director of ICE’s St. Paul field office for enforcement and removal operations. Lemon has said he was present solely in his capacity as a journalist.

After the protest, the Trump administration tried to charge eight people, including Lemon, under a 1994 law that prohibits interfering or intimidating someone during worship at a religious institution. A Minnesota judge approved charges against only three people, rejecting the evidence against Lemon and five others as insufficient.

Regardless, federal agents took Lemon into custody Friday morning in Los Angeles, where he was covering the Grammy Awards. “Instead of investigating the federal agents who killed two peaceful Minnesota protesters, the Trump Justice Department is devoting its time, attention and resources to this arrest, and that is the real indictment of wrongdoing in this case,” Lemon’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said in a statement. “This unprecedented attack on the First Amendment and transparent attempt to distract attention from the many crises facing this administration will not stand.”

Among those arrested last week was Nekima Levy Armstrong, a civil rights attorney who helped organize and lead the protest. The White House tweeted a digitally-altered image of her being arrested to make it look like she’d been crying; the image also appeared to darken her skin.

There’s really nothing else to say except that this is fucking terrifying.