‘It’s Crazy!’ CNN Legal Analyst Trashes Trump DOJ for Arresting Don Lemon, Declares Case Will Go ‘Nowhere’
A CNN legal analyst predicted the Department of Justice’s case against former CNN anchor Don Lemon was going “nowhere” despite the recent arrest of the independent journalist.
On Friday morning, Lemon’s attorney released a statement revealing he was arrested the previous night in Los Angeles. The arrest stemmed from his presence at a Minneapolis church, where he was covering an anti-ICE protest. Since then, the Trump administration has sought to charge the protesters for storming a house of worship.
Although Lemon and his legal team have maintained that he was simply covering the event as a journalist, the administration has repeatedly tried to bring charges against him. Despite the DOJ’s attempts being rejected by a judge and an appeals court, federal agents brought him into custody Thursday night.
Hours after the news of Lemon’s arrest, CNN legal analyst Joey Jackson joined anchor John Berman to detail the gravity of the stunning move:
John, I don’t know how clear I could be about this, but I think everyone knows, an eighth-grader knows something about the First Amendment — you know, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom to do what you need to do. Before getting into the law, just as a person living in this country, we are in such different and bizarre times. This is heartbreaking to see what’s happening here. In the event someone’s going to be arrested, there should be some scintilla of law which supports and sponsors the arrest or gives probable cause. Understand what happened here, John. Understand the dynamic of going to a judge and asking the judge to evaluate to determine whether there’s criminality, a judge saying no, you going to an appeals court and appeals denying that, but you’re still moving forward. Where are we right now?
Jackson then cited a number of other high-profile cases to predict that the Trump administration will have no luck against Lemon.
“At the end of the day, this case is going to end up — yes, prediction right now — the same way that James Comey’s case ended up: nowhere,” Jackson continued, “the same way that Letitia James’s case ended up: nowhere. And so look, if you want to say that somebody physically coerced someone in a church not to engage in that practice, of course, there are protections for that, because that’s not this.
At the end of the segment, an exasperated Jackson noted that the whole situation was “crazy.”
Watch above via CNN
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