Disgraced former-CNN anchor Don Lemon said he “will not be silenced” after a Minnesota grand jury indicted him for violating the First Amendment rights of worshipers in St. Paul last week. Naturally, no one is trying to silence the man, as much as any reasonable person would love it if he shut up. What the Justice Department is doing is applying federal law equally to Lemon as to others, which includes recognizing when journalists cross the line from speech into conduct.
According to the indictment, Lemon and some 20 co-conspirators gathered in a shopping center parking lot to plan “Operation Pullup” on the morning of Jan. 18. Lemon began livestreaming his activities in the parking lot, showing viewers that he was about to take part in a “resistance” action but had to maintain operational secrecy about where he and the others were going so it wouldn’t spoil the plan.
Once at Cities Church, which Lemon would later accuse of being white supremacists, he and his co-conspirators trespassed on private property, physically commandeered church space, shouted at Sunday worshippers, and physically obstructed the movement of church members. “The whole point of [the operation] is to disrupt,” Lemon explained to the camera. When the pastor of the church asked Lemon to leave, he and his co-conspirators refused to do so, instead continuing to harass and intimidate worshippers.
The indictment alleges that these and other actions violate 18 U.S.C. § 248, which, among other things, makes it a crime to “intimidate or interfere with any person lawfully exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship.” By any plain reading of the indictment, interfering with the members of Cities Church’s right to exercise the First Amendment is what Lemon did that day. The fact that he took a camera along to film his offense does not make any illegal actions legal. Filming outrage is what protesters do these days. It doesn’t give them a free pass, and it shouldn’t give Lemon one either.
Let’s say, for example, that a mob incited by a politician were to storm a federal building, committing trespass just as Lemon did. Would those rioters be free from prosecution just because they filmed their crimes on a cellphone? No, of course not. Eight Jan. 6 defendants tried to claim they were only there as journalists filming the riot and that prosecuting them for trespass would be a violation of their First Amendment rights. No judge bought these arguments, and all eight defendants were convicted. Lemon deserves the same fate. He used to be a journalist until he was fired by CNN for misogynistic behavior toward female colleagues, but now he is an activist hiding behind a camera.
Lemon’s attorney Abbe Lowell, who also represented Hunter Biden, called the Lemon indictment an “unprecedented attack on the First Amendment,” which is ironic because Lemon is the one who filmed himself violating the First Amendment right of Cities Church members to exercise their religious beliefs.
President Joe Biden used 18 U.S.C. § 248, which also prohibits obstruction of access to abortion clinics, to prosecute more than 50 anti-abortion activists. Almost all of what these defendants did was protest outside of the clinic. They never even went inside. But the Biden Justice Department argued that their protests intimidated patients seeking abortions.
DEAR DEMOCRATS, ENFORCING IMMIGRATION LAW ISN’T FASCISM
If Democrats want to repeal 18 U.S.C. § 248, they should make the case to the public. But as long as the law is on the books, it should be applied equally. The rule of law suffers when prosecutors apply statutes selectively based on whether the target is a church or an abortion clinic. Choosing not to enforce a law for political reasons undermines justice just as much as enforcing it for political reasons.
Equal justice means the law applies based on conduct, not credentials or politics. If 18 U.S.C. § 248 was rightly enforced to protect access to abortion clinics, it must also be enforced to protect access to churches. The First Amendment is not a license to trespass or disrupt worship. Upholding the Lemon indictment isn’t about silencing speech, it’s about defending the rule of law for everyone.