Don Lemon Tells Kimmel Police Wanted to ‘Embarrass’ Him With Arrest

Don Lemon has been speaking out about his recent arrest, revealing he offered to turn himself in days before federal agents detained him at a Beverly Hills hotel on Friday (January 30).

Appearing as a guest on Monday’s (February 2) episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the former CNN anchor detailed the arrest, which he said was carried out in a way to “embarrass” him.

Lemon, who was in Los Angeles to cover the Grammys, said he returned to his hotel in the early hours of Friday morning. “I press the elevator button and then, all of a sudden, I feel myself being jostled and people trying to grab me and put me in handcuffs,” he explained.

“And I said, ‘What are you doing here?’ They said, ‘We came to arrest you.’ I said, ‘Who are you?’ And then they, like, finally identify themselves,” Lemon continued.

He went on to say he asked to see a warrant, but the agents didn’t have one with them. So they had to wait for an FBI agent to arrive with a copy of the warrant on a cellphone.

“It had to be maybe a dozen people, which is a waste, Jimmy, of resources,” Lemon stated. “Because I had told them weeks before, maybe once or twice. I think my attorney tried to contact them once, maybe twice, that I could just go in, and they didn’t have to be… the folks that were just working there that day, and they didn’t have to have all of these people following me around.”

Kimmel said, “It’s more than just a waste of resources.”

Lemon agreed, adding, “They want that. They want to embarrass you. They want to intimidate you. They want to instil fear, and so that’s why they did it that way.”

The longtime journalist was arrested last Friday and charged with conspiracy to deprive rights and violation of the First Amendment for his connection to an anti-ICE protest at a church in Minnesota.

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On January 18, Lemon posted footage on the social media app BlueSky of protestors interrupting a church service in Minneapolis. One of the church’s pastors is reportedly a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Lemon maintains he was there in a journalistic capacity. However, according to Fox News Digital, in the indictment, the Department of Justice accuses him of coordinating with the protest organizers before they arrived at the church.

“I’ve spent my entire career covering the news. I will not stop now,” Lemon told the press outside the courthouse on Friday. “There is no more important time than right now, this very moment, for a free and independent media that shines a light on the truth and holds those accountable. And I will not stop now. I will not stop ever.”

Lemon plans to contest the charges.