Saturday Rewind: A Lemon of a Case
Trump DOJ's latest attack on a free press collapsed again.
Learn more about the facts and legal background of the protest inside a St. Paul church in the video below this story.
Since a judge rejected a criminal complaint against independent journalist Don Lemon on Thursday, the highest levels of the Justice Department have been scrambling to reverse that decision.
Newly unsealed documents reveal that Pam Bondi, Todd Blanche, and their subordinates have been rebuffed at every turn.
On Friday, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals secretly denied Attorney General Pam Bondi’s attempts to immediately issue arrest warrants against five people. The government charged three organizers of the Cities Church protest from Sunday, Jan. 18, but judges refused to sign the remaining five warrants.
Without mentioning the former CNN anchor’s name, the documents refer to the Justice Department’s attempts to prosecute a “journalist and his producer” reporting on a protest.
After U.S. Magistrate Judge Douglas L. Micko rejected charging Lemon on Thursday, the Justice Department filed an emergency petition for a writ of mandamus. The three-judge panel unanimously rejected the gambit, two of the members without any comment.
U.S. Circuit Judge L. Steven Grasz, a Trump appointee rated “not qualified” by the American Bar Association, opined that there was “clearly probable cause” for the warrant but that relief was procedurally improper.
The District of Minnesota’s Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz, a George W. Bush appointee, panned the government’s maneuver as “frivolous.” Schiltz revealed that he plans to make a decision about the remaining five warrants on Tuesday, but that he sees no basis to charge Lemon or his producer.
“The government lumps all eight protestors together and says things that are true of some but not all of them,” Schiltz wrote. “Two of the five protestors were not protestors at all; instead, they were a journalist and his producer. There is no evidence that those two engaged in any criminal behavior or conspired to do so.”
Schiltz’s full responses lay bare the extreme and Kafkaesque lengths to which Trump’s Justice Department has tried to pursue the case. The government filed its appellate petition under seal, even from the judge, and gave the judge mere hours to respond to their “mystery petition.”
This week on the All Rise News playlist on Legal AF, I laid out the facts and legal landscape of the St. Paul church protest with former federal prosecutor and First Amendment lawyer Mitchell Epner.
Other videos this week delve into:
the whistleblower report revealing the once-secret ICE memo claiming the power to invade homes without a judicial warrant;
the cruel “Catch of the Day” operations taking place in Maine;
an extended interview with an attorney for Renee Good’s family, and
attorney Mark Zaid’s successful attempt to sue for his security clearance.
You can watch all of these videos and more on the All Rise News playlist on Legal AF here. Paid subscribers can watch them ad-free below.
