Lawyers for the former CNN host have gone independent Journalist Don Lemon He claimed in a lawsuit Wednesday that recent examples of grand jury misconduct by the U.S. Department of Justice across the country warranted the release of transcripts of the normally secret proceedings in his case.
Lemon pleaded not guilty in February Federal civil rights chargesafter A Protest at a Minnesota church Where the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer is a priest. He is one of 39 people charged in the January incident.
Lemon insists he was at Cities Church in St. Paul to chronicle the January 18 protest but was not a participant.
Lemon and another freelance journalist, Georgia Forte, filed a request in February for transcripts of the grand jury proceedings that resulted in charges against them and seven others.
In the latest lawsuit before the US District Court in Minneapolis, Lemon’s lawyers say that “the past 15 months have witnessed an unprecedented and growing distrust of the Department of Justice’s use of the grand jury process.” For that reason, his lawyers said, grand jury transcripts in the Lemon case should be made public.
“In just the past two weeks, several courts have punished Department of Justice prosecutors for irregularities in the grand jury process, going so far as to dismiss indictments for grand jury misconduct,” Lemon’s lawyers said in a filing Wednesday.
A Justice Department spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Lemon cites May 21 dismissal of all charges pending against the remaining four Activists Who has protested outside a federal building over the past year Immigration campaign in Chicago. The dismissal came after the judge examined allegations of grand jury misconduct by the district attorney’s office.
Lemon also cites May 15 dismissal Of nine criminal grand jury indictments by three federal judges in Wyoming. The justices cited misconduct by the interim U.S. attorney that could have prejudiced the jury, including comments he made to the grand jury.
Lemon cites a third case out of Rhode Island where he was a federal judge On May 13th Banned Comprehensive demands of the Trump administration To obtain confidential information about transgender patients from the state’s largest hospital that provides gender-affirming care to minors.
In that case, the judge criticized the plaintiffs’ actions, saying the Department of Justice could no longer be trusted to enforce its authority fairly and honestly.
Finally, Limon’s attorneys pointed to the denial of search warrants requested by the Department of Justice regarding Limon’s YouTube channel, YouTube account, and cellphone information related to four other defendants. The magistrate judge held that the government had not established probable cause to believe that evidence of a crime would be found in what the Department of Justice wanted to search.
The search warrants were denied in February, but the court record was unsealed Tuesday.
Many judges – incl Chief Federal Judge No probable cause was found to support the complaints prosecutors first tried to file against the journalists, so they refused to sign arrest warrants for Lemon or Fort before the government went to the grand jury.
Lemon’s lawyers say they should be allowed to see the grand jury records because of the “checkered history of this case” and “the numerous examples of grand jury misconduct by the Department of Justice across the country.”
His lawyers said Lemon “is entitled to know whether the government permitted the grand jury to perform its role or whether, as is the case elsewhere, the government interfered with the proper function of the grand jury.”