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The Department of Justice will have to prove more than just Don Lemon’s “mere presence” at the church invasion in Minnesota to convict the former CNN host of illegally bursting into the Sunday service with a swarm of anti-ICE protesters, experts told The Post Friday.
Lemon faces up to 10 years on one charge of conspiracy to violate the constitutional right of others and a violation of the 1994 FACE Act, or the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, originally meant to prevent people from blocking entrance to health clinics but also prohibits interfering with religious worship.
But he claims he was simply covering the melee on Jan. 18 in St. Paul as a journalist for his internet show called “The Don Lemon Show” — an argument prosecutors will no doubt attempt to knock down as the case winds through LA federal court.
“In order to prove a conspiracy, you have to prove that all of the people who are charged with conspiracy shared an unlawful purpose,” said Ron Kuby, New York City’s famed criminal defense attorney. “Lemon’s defense is, ‘I was documenting what happened.’”
“To prove conspiracy, as well as to prove the substantive FACE Act violation, they have to prove something other than mere presence at the scene,” the lawyer explained.
A grand jury indicted Lemon and eight others on charges that they allegedly conspired to barge into the Cities Church and disrupt Sunday service following the shooting of Renee Goode at the hands of an ICE agent — with court papers outlining 26 “overt acts” that prosecutors say prove that Lemon was in on the act as a protester, not a journalist.
The unemployed TV personality, 59, was arrested in Los Angeles late Thursday night just hours after rubbing shoulders with celebrities at a music event in the city.
Lemon — who was fired from CNN in 2023 and later had his X show canceled — filmed the protest and posted it on social media.
Both Kuby and another criminal defense lawyer Michael Bachner said a journalist simply being present during criminal act doesn’t make them complicit in it.
“You can’t indict a journalist because he’s at a bank robbery,” Bachner said.
Bachner said the feds would have to prove that Lemon had schemed with others to “deprive churchgoers of their constitutional right to access the church.”
“Lemon would have had to be a part of that and agreed to participate in obstructing the ability of these parishioners to attend church and to access the church,” Bachner said. “If he’s merely there covering the story, asking questions about what’s going on there but not actively engaging to obstruct, then there is no charge.”
Prosecutors allege that Lemon was part of the “takeover-style attack” at the church — even thanking Black Lives Matter activist and civil rights attorney Nekima Armstrong “for what she was doing” that day.
“[H]e took steps to maintain operational secrecy by reminding certain co-conspirators not to disclose the target of the operation and stepped away momentarily so his mic would not accidentally divulge certain portions of the planning session,” the indictment reads.
The Justice Department was blocked by a federal judge from obtaining an arrest warrant for Lemon earlier this month, and an appeals court refused to review that ruling.
Kuby believes prosecutors “will have an extremely difficult time proving” their case.
Lemon was arrested in LA ahead of his gig covering the Grammy Awards and three others were also cuffed for alleged involvement in the incident — which Attorney General Pam Bondi called a “coordinated attack.”
Lemon’s hot-shot lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said his client was in St. Paul engaging in “constitutionally protected work.”
“The First Amendment exists to protect journalists whose role it is to shine light on the truth and hold those in power accountable,” said Lowell, who also represented disgraced former first son Hunter Biden.
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