Trump DOJ Indicts Don Lemon Over MN Reporting

21:17Don Lemon:I mean, it's extraordinary. And what's more extraordinary about it is that there was some some of the DOJ's filings were actually under seal and the judges weren't even aware. So not only did two judges reject these charges, but the DOJ was actually filing things secretly under seal, again, characterizing a journalist doing the act of journalism, commenting on other people's expressive rights, characterizing that as so secret that it had to be done in private. It's unbelievably unbelievable. Gene?

21:52Tara Palmeri:Well, no, I just wanted to note that in those clips that you showed earlier, you heard Don Lemon, you saw him interviewing people who were of the church. So it's not as if he came in, rah-rah, only talked to the protesters. He was talking to the people in the church whose service had been interrupted. He's bringing both sides, all sides of the story to his viewers and listeners. And so if that isn't journalism, then clearly this administration has no idea what journalism is. and it would so surprise me again you guys are the are the experts but it would surprise me if this just didn't just get dismissed at a very early stage both of our guests uh are going to

22:46Ari Melber:stay with us i want to believe we have now a shot of where mr lemon is expected to come out uh he could speak very soon uh this is again all happened uh with haste from an arrest last night in L.A. around the reporting he did in Minneapolis. As you see, pretty straightforward. A clump of mics outside the federal courthouse where we know he has finished his appearance. And so First Amendment Attorney Kate Bolger and journalist Eugene Robinson stay with me. We believe this could happen soon. And when it does, we'll bring you Mr. Lemon's comments. Kate, here is what Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said to Fox regarding the freedom of the press and the Lemon criticism.

23:31Ari Melber:Do I have a reaction to it? I don't know what that means.

23:34Don Lemon:What are you looking for me to do? Jump up and down? No, I don't have a reaction to it. I don't know that the charges are unsealed yet. So, no, I can't. I'm not going to comment on that.

23:48Ari Melber:Sorry, we're going to take a look at another role. This is from Jan 19th. Let me play this as well, please.

23:55Don Lemon:Now, what you saw there was anti-Christian, anti-law enforcement. That's a violation of law. As our assistant attorney general said yesterday, we are absolutely investigating that conduct. And the fact that that man, that Mr. Lemon, thought that that was a good idea to do that, and then to race away from it saying it was freedom of the press. Well, we'll see. We'll see.

24:18Ari Melber:Kate, that shows both him recently because he didn't say much, but then we also have him on Fox when he was talking that way. And I'll warn everyone, if Mr. Levin takes the mic, I will cut in. But go ahead, Kate.

24:30Don Lemon:I mean, I think what's amazing is the Trump administration has had this full scale attack on First Amendment rights from the first Trump administration to this one. And they've they've changed the way they attack it. Sometimes they sue. Sometimes they subpoena. Sometimes they do all these things to try to whittle away not just at the rights of journalists, but public confidence in journalism. But this is one step further. Right. This is criminalizing conduct that has never been criminalized in modern American society and doing it with that smug, sarcastic arrogance in which they talk about fellow American citizens that I think it's really I mean, look, the federal government is wearing masks and killing our citizens.

25:07Don Lemon:We have things to worry about. But this this constant erosion of these principles we've held dear with this smug, sarcastic tone is really something that should be alarming to to all of our citizens. It's really remarkable to see that sneer.

25:23Ari Melber:We are watching. Thank you. That's Kate Bolger giving us the breakdown. We're watching the footage we have of Mr. Lemon leaving the courthouse. We're going to listen to what he says when he gets to the mic. For those joining us, this is part of a wider case the Trump administration brought today. You can see John Lemon there walking, surrounded by many other reporters, photographers. Mr. Lemon was charged along with the people who stormed the church. It's a case virtually without any precedent. He's coming out of a court hearing where the Trump administration asserted in court that he was a, quote, danger to the community.

26:00Ari Melber:But he was released, as you see, on his own reconnaissance. As mentioned, this happens to be in Los Angeles because that's where the feds took Mr. Lemon into custody. The next hearing in this unusual, controversial case, which tries to essentially criminalize what he did in Minnesota reporting on those events. The next hearing we can mention will be in February in Minnesota court. We're going to listen in to Mr. Lemon when he gets to the microphone, as you can see. Plenty of interest here. Let's listen in. I need sunglasses.

26:34Tara Palmeri:I'm good. I'm good. How are you? Wow. Can everybody hear me? Are you guys set? Everybody ready? So look, I want to thank everybody for their support. It really, it truly means the world to me. I have no idea what's going on because obviously I haven't seen anything. I've spent my entire career covering the news. I will not stop now. In fact, there is no more important time than right now, this very moment, for a free and independent media that shines a light on the truth and holds those in power accountable. Again, I will not stop now. I will not stop ever. Last night, the DOJ sent a team of federal agents to arrest me in the middle of the night for something that I've been doing for the last 30 years.

27:27Tara Palmeri:And that is covering the news. The First Amendment of the Constitution protects that work for me and for countless of other journalists who do what I do. I stand with all of them and I will not be silenced. I look forward to my day in court. Thank you all.

27:53Ari Melber:We've been listening to Don Lemon's first remarks since his indictment by the Trump DOJ. He read a short, what appeared to be prepared statement, saying in general terms that what he was indicted for and what is at issue in the incident in Minnesota was something he's been doing his whole life. a reference to a very long career. Mr. Lemon, of course, known as a CNN reporter and anchor, also had stints with NBC and other outlets. We can see on the overhead shot him walking out, surrounded by journalists. We're going to listen and see if we hear anything else on the microphones, but it does appear that he's walking away from where he made his remarks.

28:34Ari Melber:And Gene Robinson, we're going to keep our cameras on this. As always, if we get more remarks or news, we'll go back into it. But your thoughts on legally what, of course, is going to be a fairly broad and brief remark, set of remarks. Most lawyers prefer clients don't speak at all on arraignment day, no matter how innocent they assert that they are. Your reaction?

28:56Tara Palmeri:No, it was short and sweet. And he basically said all that you need to say. I was doing journalism. It's what I've done for 30 years. And I'm going to keep doing it. And guess what? It's protected activity. You know, I looked at the charges, and it looks to me as if they are—the Justice Department is attempting to claim that the protests and Don Lemon violated the First Amendment-protected right to freedom of worship. that was held by the people in the church. This is certainly a novel kind of argument, as Kate said. I've never heard or seen anything like this. And again, I can't imagine that this won't relatively quickly be tossed out by a judge since the judges who have looked at it before, the two judges who were presented with this theory before the indictment, said, no, get this out of here.

30:18Tara Palmeri:This is not a case. This is not a thing. So, again, what's the purpose? They're making a big splash. And sometimes that's what this administration wants to do. And sometimes they want to chip and erode the rights that we have. And maybe even if this case is not on the, you know, if the Justice Department doesn't succeed in throwing Don Lemon in jail, maybe they believe they will have chipped away at our freedom to kill them.

30:58Ari Melber:And Gene Robinson is speaking. We've seen Mr. Lemon now getting into a vehicle there. He's in that SUV as it drives off from from the L.A. courthouse and our overhead cameras are catching that. And it really is striking because this format of covering a judicial proceeding, covering a defendant walking out of court, keeping an eye on the moving vehicle. These are all tenants of the journalism that, by the way, Mr. Lemon has practiced for a long time. And yet here, based on the entire indictment, which I've read in our coverage and evidence, this is very different from other cases, given how thin the evidence is, how he was publicly, politically targeted and how, as mentioned, several judges already tried to stop what the Trump administration pulled off, what we're now seeing, Mr.

31:48Ari Melber:Lemon, in that vehicle leaving the courthouse. I want to bring into our special coverage David French, who's written for The New York Times, is a free speech expert in his own right, used to lead the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. What do you say, David, to seeing this type of indictment of two journalists, Mr. Lemon being the most prominent, this happening here in America today?

32:14Don Lemon:Well, look, I mean, journalists have a right to cover illegal activities. And the intrusion of the church was unquestionably illegal. I mean, you don't have a right to interrupt somebody's worship service, but journalists can cover illegal activities. In fact, right before I came on camera, I was reading an ACLU complaint about illegal stops in Minnesota. And in some of those illegal stops, there were right-wing influencers filming right alongside the ICE officers. Does that mean they're co-conspirators for the ICE officers? Or are they covering what the ICE officers are doing, even if it's illegal?

32:49Don Lemon:And so this is a pretty obvious distinction that's been known for a very long time.

32:55Ari Melber:Yeah, it's under law.

32:57Don Lemon:If the DOJ has compelling evidence that he actually participated as opposed to covering, we haven't seen it yet. And that's why these kinds of cases are incredibly dangerous. You throw out big, broad indictments. You then sort of dance on the, you know, you dance on television to celebrate the indictment. And then now, you know, we were going to end up doing, we're going to wait and actually have sober analysis of the evidence. And based on some of the coverage I've seen, it's going to be really hard to carry a conviction here. Really, really hard. I haven't seen that.

33:35Ari Melber:But let me put you a little, what about this happening here in America under Trump? Well, at that altitude, what does this mean to you?

33:42Don Lemon:I mean, this is one of so many things that we are covering and watching at this very moment. Just think about this week so far. We've had the raid of the Fulton County Election Center, where the head of, the director of national intelligence was present. We've had the president calling for the arrest of Barack Obama, trafficking in the wildest conspiracy theories. And now we have an arrest of a journalist on very specious grounds. And it's just piling up and piling up and piling up. And what I think we're watching is a process in which I think they're trying to, in essence, desensitize Americans because we can't live in this constant state of alert and outrage.

34:27Don Lemon:And so a lot of people are going to want to back away from this. It just feels so overwhelming. But I think we should look at the overwhelming day after day pattern of unconstitutional actions as an alarm bell. This is what's supposed to rally us, not to deter us.

34:43Ari Melber:Yeah. And we are at the same time seeing people rallied. I have headlines on these protests in frigid temperatures in Minneapolis where they've seen two Americans killed. Nationwide protests are the call among some. Reuters reports, business insider, no work, no school, no shopping, a general strike being planned. And I want to go right to the target list because we've added Mr. Lemon to a list we've been keeping. This is number seven. Sorry, let's go to the indictment targets, this list. And in all seriousness, I'm talking to my producers and we have many lists because there have been many approaches of crackdowns.

35:27Ari Melber:But the enemies list, David, shows also the trap of discussing only one of these cases. You could discuss only whether Mayor Baraka was trespassing in a city where he's mayor. That case fell apart. Charges completely dropped. You could discuss whether James Comey was was lawfully prosecuted by a valid prosecutor. He wasn't. Case dropped. Other of these cases are open. And we always follow the evidence on the right, the subpoenas. Mr. Lemon and Ms. Fort down in the bottom, though, when you look at it together, what do you see? and is there a problem with taking the administration at its word to look only at each case individually?

36:06Don Lemon:Nobody, nobody should take the administration at its word. In fact, it's lied so much, so frequently, at such high volume, they have zero benefit of the doubt at this point, none. And we have seen circumstances where they've trumpeted arrests only to drop charges quietly. In fact, even asking to drop charges with prejudice, meaning they can't refile them. We have seen cases brought where grand juries fail to indict time and time again. And the old saying is a prosecutor and can indict a ham sandwich. It's easy to indict people. And yet we've seen indictments fail again and again. There used to be something called a presumption of regularity that the Department of Justice enjoyed in federal courts because it had a reputation for truth telling, for fair dealing in its litigation.

36:53Don Lemon:They have squandered that completely. So we're right now at a point where we're looking at Soviet levels of truth on a daily basis from our own Department of Justice. And I don't think it's sunk in with enough Americans that that is the reality, but it is absolutely the reality. Yeah.

37:12Ari Melber:David, Kate, and Gene, thank you. Part of our special coverage here. We've gone through the better part of the hour with very few breaks. I want to have a programming note. Don Lemon's lawyer tonight, Abby Lowell, will be on MSNOW at 9 p.m. Again, thanks to our guests. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Don Lemon's lawyer will be on at 9 p.m. Eastern tonight, 6 p.m. Pacific. Sure to expand on what we heard from defendant Don Lemon in this big case. This is also a news day where about 3 million new Epstein files dropped at a time where the administration is under pressure for its cover up there, for breaking that law, for these other stories we're covering.

37:54Ari Melber:The Epstein story is still huge. We're going to tell you what's in some of those files next.

38:08Ari Melber:There's a lot happening. The other breaking news really rippling across Washington and the country today is that there's new Epstein files out. The DOJ, after blatantly breaking the law that Trump signed, has now released, 40 days after the deadline, 3 million new pages and over 100 ,000 pictures.

38:29Don Lemon:Today's release marks the end of a very comprehensive document identification and review process. After submitting the final report to Congress as required under the Act and publishing the written justifications for redactions in the Federal Register, the department's obligations under the act will be completed.

38:52Ari Melber:This has been a saga and story where both things are true. There has been rampant delay and violations of the plain letter of the law. On the other hand, for the cynics who said, well, maybe they'll just run out the clock forever and nothing else will ever be released, against the precedent of secret grand jury materials and DOJ's general process of secrecy, and that runs back through both parties. A lot of material, the millions of documents, were released today. The deputy attorney general also spoke about whether he's covering up for his boss. I can assure that we complied with the statute,

39:27Don Lemon:we complied with the act, and there is no, we did not protect President Trump. My team has certain communications with the White House.

39:37Ari Melber:Let me just be clear,

39:38Don Lemon:they had nothing to do with this review. They had no oversight over this review.

39:44Ari Melber:that's the claim by a DOJ there. There were tips that involve accusations. That doesn't mean proof regarding whether Epstein and Trump participated in sexual abuse or crimes together. There's not clarity on whether that lead was followed. Other tips include things where news articles are simply forwarded by Epstein. I'm going to show you more of that. Emails where Epstein discusses Trump, something we knew about. There is an important chart I want to show you from inside the federal government. This is new. We hadn't seen it before, partially redacted. But as you see, this is the DOJ looking at what they call the agents, accountants, authorized individuals, associates, redacted employee.

40:29Ari Melber:Take it for what you will, but some of these people might have been charged. Only Maxwell was. Elon Musk also outed for the first time in detail in these files because he writes to Epstein about trying to come visit the island and specifically says, what will be the wildest party on your island? What does wild mean when you're talking to this pedophile? Well, that's open, I suppose, to interpretation. A year later, there was an effort to coordinate an island visit with Epstein telling Musk he'd send a helicopter Again, these are the emails we have. We cannot say whether that visit transpired or certainly whether any crimes occurred.

41:10Ari Melber:You might recall that Trump's Commerce Secretary said Epstein was a blackmailer and talked openly about him last year. Turns out there are more hidden contacts between the two. An individual reference there, I should say, is Mr. Lutnick, refers to an email about them getting together. This is after Lutnick claimed he severed ties. We should note that Lutnick publicly distanced himself, and in that planning, it appeared that Lutnick was on a trip with his wife. The DOJ says this is the last of the files they'll release. We should note, 3 million is a lot less than the 6 million that prosecutors at the DOJ had initially said they had.

41:50Ari Melber:So is this a full release or not? That question looms large over what is a ton of new documents. We are joined by Tara Palmieri, a veteran journalist, author of The Red Letter, and host of the Tara Palmieri Show podcast, where she's covered exactly this story for a long time. Let's start with what's new. We can't get through all the documents today, but what jumps out to you today in the new files?

42:15Don Lemon:I think the fact that President Trump's inner circle is just so deeply entangled with Jeffrey Epstein, more so than they were ever willing to admit. The fact that Elon Musk would tweet, you know, President Trump is going to get blown up in the Epstein files. And yet here he is arranging to go on the island on a night that would be, you know, a party island. Howard Lutnick going out of his way to say he went into Epstein's house once with his wife and was horrified by it. Yet he was arranging to go to his island. So it's just like these people, they had such hubris. They had no problem lying about their extensive relationship with Jeffrey Obviously, there's a lot of really concerning tips about Donald Trump in this in these documents that we don't know if the FBI actually followed up on or did any investigating.

43:04Don Lemon:They have maintained their position since June that there were no other men involved in the sexual assault of a thousand women. And those young girls, now women, many of them have filed lawsuits, civil lawsuits, because they couldn't do it criminally because the statute of limitations or they have, you know, various settlements. And Ghislaine Maxwell said there were 25 men that signed settlements with one plaintiff alone. And so we're supposed to believe that the Department of Justice actually did a real investigation on this? It's just and we're just seeing a bunch of tips, some very disturbing about the president, but we don't know if they ever even took them seriously.

43:46Ari Melber:Mm hmm. Yeah. I mean, Donald Trump's the current president and he has known ties to Epstein. So a big part of these new files today, number one, is the heat that puts on him and, as you say, his allies. I mean, Elon Musk was a recent Trump special employee, a kind of a super cabinet official. So those are big questions. Number two, the questions that the DOJ implicate the Trump administration, which was in charge when Epstein died, but also prior and later DOJs under Democratic administrations. We'll pull up the chart again from the lead. I mean, I have it. It's one of the things I immediately printed to really study, because without disfavoring or biasing people, because there's there's much we don't know.

44:27Ari Melber:The fact that this many individuals were tied to Epstein in ways that the DOJ at the time viewed as authorized agent, associate, people with potential knowledge, people, as you know, redacted. And the only one charges Maxwell. Tara, how do you view that in terms of a report card for DOJs in both parties appearing to go softer on these now known associates than than many other targets for crimes that were, frankly, lesser crimes in America?

45:01Don Lemon:it seems like they've just given up on it altogether uh they they have i mean before june they said they were active leads when you spoke to the justice department pam bondy said she's got the epstein lead uh list on her desk then afterwards there's no one else involved and it's it's really disheartening for the victims because they were hoping that with the epstein files coming out they would have a sort of immunity in a sense where it would be public the names of the people that abused them and the information that they submitted. They wanted to feel like it wasn't their burden. They wouldn't have to deal with defamation suits.

45:36Don Lemon:Virginia Giuffre obviously had to deal with a ton of defamation suits for speaking out.

45:42Ari Melber:I'm only jumping with the minute we have left. If we say that the evidence suggests maybe first term Trump DOJ fell down on the job, then isn't it the job of the next DOJ under Merrick Garland to pick up the leads?

45:57Don Lemon:And the one before that, I mean, he was, in 1996, the first call went in about Jeffrey Epstein from Maria Farmer about her and her sister being sexually molested. And every single time he uses high ranking officials, his contacts. Obama's former White House counsel, Kathy Remler, was giving him advice on how to deal with an accusation against Donald Trump. I mean, that is how high up Jeffrey Epstein was connected to all of these administrations. And that is why he got away with one of the most perverse crimes for three decades.

46:33Ari Melber:Yeah. I'm over on time. Do you think these are most of the docs or there are some held back or too early to tell because you've followed this closely?

46:41Don Lemon:I just think three million documents had to be held back. That's a pretty high number. And we don't know why. And I think there needs to be a deeper exploration into that.

46:52Ari Melber:Yeah, a lot going on today, as you know, Tara. Well, glad we got you on this story. Thank you. We'll be right back.

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48:22Ari Melber:an update from washington and congress where the clash over dhs and ice tactics has continued the senate has now passed a spending bill that would fund the government there could still be this at least interim weekend shutdown over the timing the house comes back on monday where they could put the funding back on the table the bill sets up a two-week period to negotiate these dhs reforms democrats see that as a win since they're in the minority and trump often resists any negotiation Democrats want to use that to both fix and spotlight what they say are untenable actions by ICE in Minnesota and elsewhere.

48:57Ari Melber:That does it for us. Snoring? Gasping during sleep?

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