Don Lemon Hires Minnesota Federal Prosecutor Who Quit After Renee Good Shooting

(NDZ/STAR MAX/IPx/AP photo)

Don Lemon hired a former federal prosecutor from the Minnesota U.S. attorney’s office on Tuesday — beefing up his defense team with a lawyer who recently resigned from the same office that charged Lemon with multiple felonies, a new court filing revealed.

Joseph Thompson worked for the federal prosecutor’s office in Minnesota for almost seventeen years — The New York Times reported, in its writeup of the news. He will now face his former employers in court, defending Lemon against two felony charges surrounding the cable news veteran’s coverage of an anti-ICE protest at a church.

Thompson resigned from the U.S. attorney’s office in mid-January due to the Department of Justice’s handling of the investigation into the killing of Renee Good at the hands of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent.

Senior DOJ officials resisted Thompson and other prosecutors’ calls to investigate the shooting itself, instead pushing for an investigation into Good’s widow. Six federal prosecutors in Minnesota, including Thompson, resigned over the government’s lack of scrutiny into the shooting, as did an FBI agent who sought to investigate the ICE officer who killed Good.

Thompson joined Lemon’s lawyer Abbe Lowell in the legal defense of the former CNN anchor, who was arrested on January 30 and hit with two federal charges– one for conspiring against the right of religious freedom at a house of worship and one for interfering with freedom of religion under the FACE Act.

Lemon pleaded not guilty to the charges, and Lowell vowed to fight “vigorously” against what he called a “transparent attempt to distract attention” from problems facing President Donald Trump’s administration.

“Instead of investigating the federal agents who killed two peaceful Minnesota protesters, the Trump Justice Department is devoting its time, attention and resources to this arrest, and that is the real indictment of wrongdoing in this case,” said Lowell in a statement. “This unprecedented attack on the First Amendment and transparent attempt to distract attention from the many crises facing this administration will not stand. Don will fight these charges vigorously and thoroughly in court.”

Vice President JD Vance argued the Trump administration has a “rock solid” case against Lemon, telling Megyn Kelly on Wednesday that the case was “not about the First Amendment.”

“We have a rock solid violation of the FACE  Act, which is you were sticking a microphone in the face of a minister during the church service while the people you were with preventing people from leaving,” Vance said. “That’s a violation of the law. That’s not about the First Amendment.”

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