“Independent journalist” and former CNN anchor Don Lemon filed a motion today in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis seeking the release of grand jury transcripts in the federal civil rights case against him. From the AP:
Lemon pleaded not guilty in February to federal civil rights charges, following a protest at a Minnesota church where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official is a pastor. He is one of 39 people charged in the January incident.
Lemon insists he was at the Cities Church in St. Paul to chronicle the Jan. 18 protest but was not a participant.
Lemon and another independent journalist, Georgia Fort, filed a motion in February seeking transcripts of the grand jury proceedings that resulted in the indictments against them and seven others.
In the latest filing in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis, Lemon’s attorneys argue that “the past 15 months have seen an unprecedented and growing distrust in the Justice Department’s use of the grand jury process.” For that reason, the transcripts from Lemon’s grand jury should be released, his attorneys said.
“In the past two weeks alone, several courts have chastised Justice Department prosecutors for irregularities in the grand jury process and gone so far as to dismiss indictments for grand jury misconduct,” Lemon’s attorneys said in the Wednesday filing.
Lemon and journalist Georgia Fort face charges tied to a Jan. 18 protest that disrupted worship at Cities Church in St. Paul. Prosecutors charged 39 defendants in the case, while Lemon insists he attended the protest to document events as a journalist, not to join the disruption.
The case centers on a protest at a house of worship connected to David Easterwood, a Cities Church pastor who also serves as acting director of the ICE field office in St. Paul.
Protesters entered during Sunday worship, chanted, confronted people inside, and turned a sacred space into a political theater.
Lemon’s defenders want the country to see only a journalist with a camera. Worshippers had reason to see something else: a service interrupted, a congregation targeted, and a church treated like fair game because activists disliked the pastor’s government job.
Lemon is now arguing that recent grand jury problems in other federal cases make the transcripts necessary, with his attorneys pointing to dismissals and judicial rebukes in Chicago, Wyoming, and Rhode Island.
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