Defiant Don Lemon says ‘the process is the punishment’ after lawyers reveal feds took his phone

Updated: Don Lemon faces judge who rejected DOJ’s previous attempt to charge him with a crime

Don Lemon walked out of federal court Friday and described the day’s proceedings as something larger than a calendar entry on a criminal docket. Thanking supporters clustered near the courthouse entrance, the gay Black former CNN anchor turned independent journalist said the case “isn’t just about me,” calling the First Amendment “the bedrock of our democracy. He vowed to fight what he described as baseless charges and said he would not be intimidated.

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Inside the courtroom, Lemon’s lawyers revealed a detail that gave those words a sharper edge: the Department of Homeland Security is in possession of his phone. The defense told the judge the events at issue are narrowly time-limited and said they are working to prevent the government from accessing information unrelated to the case, such as materials journalists keep on their devices to protect sources and do their work.

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That dispute is not incidental. In contemporary reporting, a phone is less a tool than an archive: years of notes, source lists, drafts, and communications that often have nothing to do with any single assignment. Lemon’s attorneys argued that unfettered access risks exposing confidential sources and unrelated reporting, effectively turning a criminal case into a back-door search of a journalist’s professional life. The concern is as old as reporters’ privilege and as new as cloud backups: if sources believe their communications can be swept into an investigation, they are less likely to speak at all.

Journalist Don Lemon leaves with his legal team after an arraignment hearing at the Warren E. Burger Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse on February 13, 2026 in St. Paul, Minnesota. Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

Lemon’s remarks outside the court translated legal anxiety into civic anxiety. With his attorneys and husband, Tim Malone, by his side, Lemon said he has spent more than three decades working under the protection of the First Amendment and suggested that pressure applied through the legal proceedings can deter reporting long before any verdict is reached. He warned that “the process is the punishment.”

The case rests on the Trump Justice Department’s displeasure with Lemon’s coverage of a protest inside a Minnesota church last month. Demonstrators disrupted a worship service in St. Paul after learning that one of the church’s pastors was serving as an acting director of an ICE field office. Lemon interviewed protesters, congregants, and a pastor and livestreamed portions of the scene.

Prosecutors claim that this conduct, along with his knowledge of the protest before it happened, makes his coverage criminal. Lemon and his legal team counter that he was performing the regular functions of reporting, including observing, recording, and asking questions, and that criminalizing those acts threatens press freedom.

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The prosecution’s path has been unusually circuitous. Before a grand jury returned an indictment, judges declined to greenlight the government’s initial effort to proceed, forcing prosecutors to change course and seek charges through a different route. The case also swept in another journalist, Georgia Fort, who serves in leadership of the local National Association of Black Journalists chapter. Her arrest intensified concern among media organizations that the line between documenting a protest and being accused of joining it is being dangerously blurred.

Press freedom groups, including the International Women’s Media Foundation, the National Association of Black Journalists, and NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists, have warned that the case risks chilling coverage of protests and other politically charged events. A person close to Lemon told The Advocate that he plans to continue hosting his regular online show and reporting as the situation progresses.

Lemon told reporters after the hearing, “I will fight these baseless charges, and I will not be silenced.”