Overview
- Lemon, speaking Thursday on The View, said he was "specifically targeted" by President Trump and described being grabbed by federal agents near an elevator at a Los Angeles hotel.
- He said his lawyer offered to have him self-report but got no response, then a team of roughly a dozen or more agents arrested him in what he called a humiliating show of force.
- Sunny Hostin, a former federal prosecutor and co-host of the show, said the arrest approach looked designed to intimidate the press, echoing Lemon’s claim that agents sought to embarrass him.
- Lemon repeated an attorney friend’s description that he received "the N-word treatment" and said an FBI agent handed his wedding bracelet to his husband so his family knew where he was.
- The DOJ arrested Lemon in January over his coverage of an anti-ICE protest inside a St. Paul church, charging conspiracy and civil-rights violations under the FACE and Ku Klux Klan Acts; he pleaded not guilty in February as his lawyer called the case an attack on the First Amendment.