Everything Effed Up About the Don Lemon Case

INSIDE: Pam Bondi ... Todd Blanche ... Greg Bovino

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - JANUARY 30: Journalist Don Lemon departs federal court on January 30, 2026 in Los Angeles, California. Lemon was arrested in Beverly Hills in connection to a protest he had covered at a Minnesota church. He was released without bail and is scheduled to appear in federal court in Minneapolis on February 9th. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.

Where to Even Start?

The news of former CNN anchor Don Lemon’s arrest in connection with the St. Paul church protest he covered last month was just breaking Friday morning, so I want to circle back on the many new details that have emerged since the news first broke.

• Lemon wasn’t the only journalist arrested. Georgia Fort, an independent journalist in Minneapolis who is the vice president of the Minnesota chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists, was arrested at her home Friday. She posted video on Facebook of agents outside her door.

• DHS components involved the arrests. In Lemon’s case, the FBI and HSI performed the arrest, NBC News reports, citing the arrest warrant. According to Status, just DHS officers were involved. In Fort’s case, one of the officers she filmed at her door was wearing a patch emblazoned with “DEA.”

• DOJ got Lemon indictment after magistrate rejected arrest warrant. The federal indictment of Lemon, Fort and seven protester codefendants was handed down Thursday by a grand jury in Minnesota. They are being charged for the church protest under an abortion-related law: the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act of 1994.

• The Trump administration villainizes Lemon. Preening over the arrest of Lemon, the Trump administration trafficked in racist tropes about him. The White House itself posted this to X:

Harmeet Dhillon, who oversees the DOJ Civil Rights Division, retweeted Mike Davis calling Lemon a “klansman”:

Quote of the Day

The Atlantic’s Quinta Jurecic, on the church protest criminal case:

On the basis of the record available so far, the case against them appears factually weak, legally shoddy, and marred by a baffling series of procedural irregularities that raise serious questions about the Justice Department’s ability to win in court. This prosecution is best understood not as law enforcement but as propaganda, junk intended purely to get attention. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t dangerous.

Pretti Shooting

• Under duress, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche reversed course and purported to open a civil rights investigation into the fatal CBP shooting of Alex Pretti, even as he downplayed the significance of the investigation. It remains unclear how thorough the investigation will be and whether it will follow the past practices of the FBI and DOJ Civil Rights Division in use-of-force investigations. Blanche is still refusing to authorize a civil rights investigation of the earlier fatal ICE shooting of Renee Good.

• ProPublica has identified the CBP agents who shot Pretti: Jesus Ochoa and Raymundo Gutierrez. Both men were deployed to Operation Metro Surge from south Texas.

Bovino Went on ‘Antisemitic Rant’

CBP commander Gregory Bovino mocked the Orthodox Jewish faith of Minnesota U.S. Attorney Daniel N. Rosen to other lawyers in Rosen’s office, the NYT reports:

Mr. Bovino, who has been the face of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, used the term “chosen people” in a mocking way, according to the people with knowledge of the call. He also asked, sarcastically, whether Mr. Rosen understood that Orthodox Jewish criminals don’t take weekends off, the people said. …

During the call, with a handful of prosecutors listening in, Mr. Bovino complained that Mr. Rosen had been unreachable for portions of the weekend because of Shabbat. Mr. Bovino’s remarks followed his complaints about having difficulty reaching Mr. Rosen.

A CBS News source briefed on the incident described Bovino’s alleged remarks as an “antisemitic rant.”

Mass Deportation Watch

• In an order Saturday, U.S. District Court Judge Katherine Menendez declined to end Operation Metro Surge, ruling that Minnesota’s claims that it was being punished or unfairly treated by the Trump administration were insufficient to justify blocking the operation.

• In an internal memo last week, ICE expanded the power of federal agents to conduct warrantless arrests of people believed to be undocumented immigrants if they are “likely to escape” before an arrest warrant can be obtained, the NYT reports.

• Adrian Conejo Arias and his 5-year-old son Liam were released from immigration detention following Saturday’s court order from U.S. District Judge Fred Biery of San Antonio.

Sign of the Times

DHS has confirmed a measles outbreak at the ICE detention center in Texas where 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos was held

The Purges: FBI Edition

The special agent in charge of the FBI’s Atlanta field office was forced out this month after questioning the DOJ’s renewed push to probe Fulton County’s role in the 2020 election, which culminated last week with the FBI seizing voting records, MSNow reports.

Ethics Complaint Against Boasberg Dismissed

The bogus ethics complaint lodged against U.S. District Judge James Boasberg at the direction of Attorney General Pam Bondi as been cursorily dismissed in a seven-page order by Jeffrey Sutton, the chief judge of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

John Roberts Demands SCOTUS NDAs

NYT:

In November of 2024, two weeks after voters returned President Donald Trump to office, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. summoned employees of the U.S. Supreme Court for an unusual announcement. Facing them in a grand conference room beneath ornate chandeliers, he requested they each sign a nondisclosure agreement promising to keep the court’s inner workings secret.

It’s not clear whether the justices themselves were asked to sign the non-disclosure agreement.

Whistleblower Complaint About Tulsi Gabbard Stymied

A U.S. intelligence official made a a whistleblower complaint against Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard last May that is so highly classified it is locked in a safe and the whistleblower’s own lawyer hasn’t been able to see it, the WSJ reports:

The filing of the complaint has prompted a continuing, behind-the-scenes struggle about how to assess and handle it, with the whistleblower’s lawyer accusing Gabbard of stonewalling the complaint. Gabbard’s office rejects that characterization, contending it is navigating a unique set of circumstances and working to resolve the issue.

The complaint “implicates another federal agency beyond Gabbard’s,” according to the WSJ.

The whistleblower’s lawyer is Andrew Bakaj, who represented a CIA officer whose 2019 whistleblower complaint sparked Trump’s first impeachment.

The Destruction: DC Skyline Edition

• Trump threatens to do to the Kennedy Center what he did to the East Wing: Faced with audiences and artists abandoning the Trump-run and renamed Trump-Kennedy Center, President Trump announced on social media that he would shut down the performing arts center for two years beginning this summer for the “Construction, Revitalization, and Complete Rebuilding” of the official presidential memorial to President John F. Kennedy.

• Trump pursues another colossally mis-proportioned vanity project: Like his misshapen White House ballroom, President Trump’s proposed triumphal arch at one end of the Memorial Bridge would soar to 250-feet, dwarfing the 70-foot Lincoln Memorial at the opposite end.

The Corruption: UAE Edition

WSJ:

Four days before Donald Trump’s inauguration last year, lieutenants to an Abu Dhabi royal secretly signed a deal with the Trump family to purchase a 49% stake in their fledgling cryptocurrency venture for half a billion dollars, according to company documents and people familiar with the matter. The buyers would pay half up front, steering $187 million to Trump family entities. …

The deal marked something unprecedented in American politics: a foreign government official taking a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president’s company.

2026 Ephemera

How Democrat Taylor Rehmet flipped a ruby red state Senate seat in Texas that Trump carried by 17 points.

Good Read

TPM’s Hunter Walker watched the Melania documentary so you don’t have to:

The sole revelations to be found in “Melania” are about how brazen the Trumps are and about their all encompassing, incredible lack of self awareness. With so much of the movie taking place in the days leading up to the inauguration, Melania is shown tromping around the gilded confines of the family’s private residences; the deranged rococo Florida beach club, Mar-a-Lago, and their obscene mirrored apartment in Manhattan’s Trump Tower. The homes display the kind of opulence that has long been associated with authoritarian regimes. Yet, while other dictatorial leaders like Saddam Hussein, the Marcoses in the Philippines, and the Mubaraks in Egypt largely had the decency to hide their luxurious lifestyles from the people until they were overthrown, Melania shamelessly and deliberately parades her treasures before the cameras in a film she helped produce.

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