Former CNN anchor Don Lemon appears in New York days after his arrest

NEW YORK – Mr Don Lemon, a former CNN anchor who was arrested last week after covering a protest in a Minnesota church, told an audience in New York on the night of Feb 3 that he felt vulnerable but was determined to defend what he saw as an attack on free speech.

“I’m not a protester, but I am insistent on the First Amendment,” he said. “That is the bedrock of our democracy, and without the First Amendment, nothing else stands.”

The 59-year-old anchor appeared for a sold-out live talk show alongside comedian D.L. Hughley as part of their series DL + DL ‘Anything Goes’. The event is a wide-ranging discussion of culture and politics over two nights at City Winery, a waterfront venue in Manhattan.

Onstage, Mr Lemon said he had been in St Paul, Minnesota, for only six or seven hours before he returned to the airport, where he learnt he was wanted for “barging into a church and causing a ruckus”.

He invoked a freedom song from the Civil Rights Movement, Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ’Round, to criticise the Trump administration officials who had pursued his arrest, charging in an indictment that he had helped organise the protest and had threatened churchgoers who were exercising their rights.

“They don’t want the truth because they don’t want us to be free,” he said. “And I’m not going to let them turn me around.”

Mr Lemon, who has been critical of US President Donald Trump and his administration, and a local reporter, Ms Georgia Fort, were among nine people indicted on charges stemming from a Jan 18 protest that interrupted services at a church in St Paul.

The state has become the centre of resistance to Mr Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Two federal judges in Minnesota refused to sign a warrant for Mr Lemon’s arrest because of lack of evidence, but a grand jury returned an indictment Jan 29. The charges accused Mr Lemon of threatening people trying to exercise their religion in a place of worship.

Federal agents arrested him within hours in Los Angeles, where he had gone to cover the Grammy Awards.

He is due back in court on Feb 9. If convicted, he faces a sentence of up to one year in prison.

On the night of Feb 3, attendees were filing into the venue for his talk.

Ms Colette Hebert, 41, a school teacher who lives in Westchester County, said she had come to show support for Mr Lemon after his arrest, which she found disturbing.

“All he was doing was saying what’s happening, and he got arrested,” she said. “So how should people feel safe when the news is being censored?”

The New York shows follow an appearance late on Feb 2 on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in which Mr Lemon described his arrest in detail and defended the role of journalists.

He vowed that he would not allow Trump administration officials to “steal my joy” with an arrest he believed was intended to humiliate him.

“They want to embarrass you,” he said. “They want to intimidate you.”

Mr Lemon, who left CNN in 2023 after 17 years with the network, is the host of a daily, two-hour news show on YouTube with 1.16 million subscribers.

Recounting his arrest in Los Angeles on Jan 29, Mr Lemon said he had been about to take an elevator to his hotel room. But after he pressed the button, he said, about a dozen officers rushed him.

They were briefly thwarted when he asked to see a warrant, but an FBI agent soon arrived and showed it to him on a smartphone.

Mr Lemon said he thought the whole spectacle was a waste of resources because he had offered to turn himself in soon after he learnt at the Minnesota airport that officials were seeking to charge him. It was a routine courtesy that others had been afforded, he said. Mr Kimmel promptly gave an example: Mr Trump.

Mr Kimmel was a sympathetic host. His network, ABC, suspended his show for nearly a week in September
after a Trump administration official and conservatives said he had inaccurately described the politics of the man who killed Charlie Kirk.

Mr Lemon said corporate media had been “neutered”, driven by efforts to preserve access to key officials and to present opposing sides of issues even when it meant giving a platform to people who lie.

“Some things are objectively bad, and I think it’s important in this time to point that out,” he said.

Mr Trump’s critics joined Mr Lemon in characterising the case as an attack on free speech and the press.

But administration officials said Mr Lemon had infringed on the religious rights of the churchgoers. Still, some of the US President’s supporters worried that arresting Mr Lemon had only made the journalist more popular.

Even Mr Trump seemed to believe as much, telling reporters that it was “the best thing that could have happened” to Mr Lemon, whom the President called “washed up” and a “failed host”. NYTIMES