Don Lemon Thought He Was Being Mugged During Arrest, His Attorney Says | Video

Don Lemon feared he was the target of a violent crime when he was arrested Thursday evening, his attorney, Abbe Lowell, revealed.

The attorney, who is representing the independent journalist as he faces federal civil rights charges for his presence at an anti-ICE protest at a church in Minnesota, appeared on “The Briefing With Jen Psaki” Friday evening and shared insight into how Lemon was doing after his arrest.

“I mean, no matter how solid you are and how much you’ve covered the news … when it happens to you, it’s a different event,” Lowell shared with MS Now host Jen Psaki.

Lemon faces charges under two federal statutes, conspiracy to deprive rights and violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, which in part prevents one from interfering with someone’s First Amendment right of religious freedom.

As Lowell went on, he defended that Lemon was simply doing his job as a journalist — a job which he has done for 30 years and is protected by the Bill of Rights.

Still, amid the uproar over Lemon’s coverage of the anti-ICE protest at a church in St. Paul earlier this month, Lowell said he reached out to the Department of Justice on Lemon’s behalf.

“I wrote to the Department of Justice 10 days ago and I said I’m representing Don Lemon,” he recalled. “I understand you might be investigating him. If you’re going to take any action, do it the right way. You don’t have to make a show of it. You don’t have to make a circus of this. Get in touch with me.”

Per Lowell, he never heard back from the DOJ. Instead, as Lowell described it, Lemon was targeted late at night at his hotel in Los Angeles, Calif.

“They wait until he’s in Los Angeles. That’s not enough,” he noted. “They waited until 11:30 at night — when he was coming back from doing what he does — in the lobby of a hotel, and not one, not two, not three, but [a] bevy of agents surrounded and [took] him away. Don thought he was being mugged because he has been controversial and he actually thought some crazy people on the right might be stalking him.”

While Lowell didn’t have the exact number of agents involved in Lemon’s arrest, he said it was “more than the one that was necessary to do it the right way.”

Lowell suggested that Lemon’s arrest took place late at night so that the famed journalist was forced “to spend a night in jail.”

He added: “That’s what happened to Don for doing his job.”

Watch Lowell’s full interview above.

“The Briefing With Jen Psaki” airs Tuesdays through Fridays at 9 p.m. ET on MS Now.

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