Don Lemon Whines to Judge and Blames Trump in Bid to Get Indictment Thrown Out

This is one spotlight Don Lemon doesn’t like a bit.

The former CNN anchor whose vicious attacks on President Donald Trump have kept him in the public eye for more than a decade is asking a judge to dismiss an indictment against him for his actions surrounding the disruption of a Minnesota church service in January.

And his reasoning? He claims he was indicted because Trump doesn’t like him.

Don Lemon asked a judge to dismiss the civil rights case against him, citing years of President Trump’s derisive comments against him.

Lemon was accused of violating congregants’ right to worship when he entered a Minnesota church with protesters. https://t.co/GHEqGQpAuf

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) August 8, 2026

According to CBS News, Lemon’s attorneys filed papers on Friday claiming the Justice Department’s action against him is “vindictive” prosecution based on the president’s personal feelings — not Lemon’s actions.

His attorneys also filed a motion claiming Lemon’s behavior during the Jan. 18 storming of Cities Church in St. Paul was protected by the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of the press, and that he never crossed the line between reporter and participant in the action.

The indictment against Lemon paints a very different picture, however.

It describes how Lemon allegedly coordinated his activities with the leaders of the protest, deliberately keeping the target of the action under wraps while livestreaming preparations for it.

“We’re going to head to the operation,” Lemon told his audience, according to the indictment. “Again, we’re not going to give any, any of the information away.”

To a government prosecutor, words like that sound an awful lot like conspiracy. And in fact, Lemon is charged with “Conspiracy Against Right of Religious Freedom at Place of Worship.”

He was arrested while in Los Angeles to cover the Grammy awards in late January — and treated like a hero by the libs just as you’d expect.

Americans have a right to different opinions on the freedom of the press that’s enshrined in the United States Constitution. And all criminal defendants, including Lemon, have a right to challenge their prosecutions on any legal grounds that will help their case.

But none of that includes the right to insult the intelligence of the American people.

And Lemon’s complaint that his federal prosecution is simply driven by the president’s ire is an insult to the nation’s intelligence.

To review the actual facts of the case, Lemon was involved in the early stages of the demonstration at Cities Church, to the point where he knew the target of the disruption ahead of time and deliberately withheld it from his internet audience so it would not be hindered if law enforcement caught wind of it.

At the church itself, he was part of the crew that entered the building and disrupted an ongoing religious service to make a political point. (A pastor at the church was a leader in a local office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.)

And he personally badgered at least one member of the congregation as well as the service’s leader with propaganda questions aimed at boosting the protesters’ profile.

Whether any and all of that rises to the level of a punishable crime is up to the court system to decide.

But Lemon’s argument that he’s being targeted for “vindictive” prosecution can be dismissed out of hand.

Does Trump dislike Lemon? While no one can truly look into the heart of another, it’s a good bet that he doesn’t. And he’s got good reason.

Like a malicious parasite feeding on its host, Lemon used the years of Trump’s dominance over American politics to carve out his own second-rate career acting as a mouthpiece for the millions of misguided Americans who have swallowed the establishment media’s anti-Trump propaganda.

Should the criminal case against Lemon be dismissed because of that?

It’s a childish proposition — the way a second-grader in trouble for talking in class will claim it’s only because “the teacher doesn’t like me.”

It’s entirely possible that the teacher doesn’t like the kid, but that’s not why he’s staying after school.

And the fact is that Don Lemon spent Trump’s first term enjoying a fame his journalistic career didn’t merit. (It’s not a coincidence that Lemon lost his primetime spot at CNN in 2022, after Trump was out of the White House.)

The fact is that Lemon washed out of his morning show at CNN because he was attracting no viewers and causing distracting scandals.

(Lemon’s buffoonery was almost enough to make a conservative feel sorry for Kaitlan Collins.)

And the fact is, he was fired from CNN for his own failures as a television personality. Now, he’s reduced to a show on YouTube, a far, far cry from the national spotlight he used to have — and evidently still craves.

(His participation in the St. Paul protest was an obvious stab at remaining relevant.)

Unfortunately for Lemon, that relevance comes with the spotlight of a criminal prosecution — and that’s a consequence for his actions he’s trying to avoid at all costs.

But he brought it on himself, and even livestreamed it himself.

He might not appreciate the attention it got. But it’s not Trump’s fault.

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