Don Lemon detailed his Grammys Week arrest during a visit to Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Monday night.
Lemon’s appearance on ABC’s late-night talker came five days after the CNN anchor-turned-independent journalist was arrested by federal agents in Los Angeles following conservative backlash over his coverage of an anti-ICE protest at a St. Paul, Minnesota church earlier this month.
“I mean, I’m ‘okay,'” Lemon told host Jimmy Kimmel, struggling to sum up his current state of mind. “I’m not going to let them steal my joy, but this is very serious. These are federal criminal charges.”
A grand jury in Minnesota indicted Lemon (and three others )on charges of conspiracy and interfering with the First Amendment rights of worshippers during a Jan. 18 protest at the Cities Church in St. Paul. (Protesters claimed that one of the church’s pastors, David Easterwood, is an acting field director for ICE.)
Lemon was released without bond Friday evening; he plans to plead not guilty and fight the charges.
On Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Lemon explained that amid the initial scrutiny of his coverage of the Cities Church protest, he had lawyers reach out to the feds to discuss his turning himself in, if needed.
“People who are accused of much worse things than I am accused of doing, they are allowed the courtesy” to turn themselves in, Lemon noted. To name one quite relevant example: “Donald Trump was allowed the courtesy” after being indicted for attempting to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.
Things played out differently for the CNN alum, however.
As U.S. Attorney General Pam Bond and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche started publicly weighing in on the situation, “I retained an attorney,” Lemon recounted. “And the attorney reached out to them and said, basically, ‘If you are serious about this, let’s do it the right way. He’s perfectly willing to self-report,’ which means turn yourself in. ‘We don’t have to go through this whole rigmarole.’
“And [my attorney] never heard back from them,” he said.
Instead, the feds grabbed Lemon while he was in Los Angeles for Grammys Week, as shared in the clip below.
Don Lemon tells Jimmy Kimmel he offered to self-report/turn himself into the DOJ, but heard nothing.
— LateNighter (@latenightercom) February 3, 2026
Instead, they came for him at a Grammys Week event. pic.twitter.com/DYrmatTuNI
“I had gone to the Spotify party,” he told Kimmel. Afterwards, “I got back to the hotel… and I pressed the elevator button and all of a sudden I feel myself being jostled. and people trying to grab me and put me in handcuffs.
“I said, ‘What are you doing here?’ They said, ‘We came to arrest you.’ I said, ‘Who are you?’ Finally they identified themselves, and I said, ‘If you are who you are, where’s the warrant?’ So, they had to wait for someone outside, an FBI guy to come in, to show me a warrant on a cell phone.
“By that time, I was trying figure out what was going on, get my bearings,” Lemon continued. “I dropped all my stuff, my glasses had fallen on the floor. I was like, ‘I can’t read that [warrant].’ They had to pick my glasses up, and I read it. Still, what does that mean? “
Lemon said that “maybe a dozen” federal agents were involved in his needlessly public arrest, “which is a waste of resources because I had told them weeks before—maybe once or twice— that I could just go in, and it would have to be just the folks working that day. They wouldn’t have to have all these people following me around.”
But, “They want that. They want to embarrass you,” Lemon posited. “They want to instill fear. That’s why they did it that way.”
Anyone who thinks they’re doing an awesome job is obviously a sick in the head pariah that people don’t want to be near!
But don’t worry! Those charges were filed by morons, which will get quickly dismissed! So the ICEhole lickers will have something to cry about again!
It’s telling that a judge looked at the charges the government put forth and found there was no evidence of criminal behavior involved in Don Lemon’s work. Not satisfied with that, the DOJ went to a grand jury to get what they wanted.
This is, far and away, the stupidest administration in White House history!
You mean the DOJ forced a majority of 25 LEGAL Minnesota citizens to indict Lemon? Amazing. Kimmel nor Lemon even once acknowledge hat the grand jury found probable cause.
The only people that were intimidated and had fear were the poor victims of the church by Lemon and his violent thug comrades – especially the poor church woman that got her leg broken by these left-wing fuckfaces.
Convict Lemon and send him to a woman’s prison for actual punishment.
Of a sick in the head pariah that people don’t want to be near! Isn’t he the dumbest, peoples?