Conservative commentator Glenn Beck defended former CNN host Don Lemon on Monday after the Trump administration threatened to charge him for recording the storming of a Minneapolis church service by anti-ICE protesters.
“I just think Don Lemon is just one of the most irrelevant human beings on the planet and, you know, I would like to say I think of him as an irrelevant guy, but I actually don’t ever think of him, so it’s even more irrelevant than that,” said Beck during an interview with Department of Justice official Harmeet Dhillon. “But I’m not sure if he was in violation unless he was part of it.”
He continued, “I mean, you wouldn’t– do you go after the journalist that’s reporting it? Or do you view him as something that was not just reporting it?”
Dhillon responded, “Well, I’m going to reserve comment on that specific fact pattern, but let’s just take a hypothetical, okay? A hypothetical where a podcaster, once a news anchor, is deciding that he’s learning of a crime in progress. It’s a bank robbery, okay? And he’s friends with the bank robbers and he sympathizes with them because he agrees with what they’re going to spend the money on.”
“So the bank robbers call him because they’d like some PR because they think what they’re doing is great, whatever, and you decide to go along and you know that the group of people you’re with are breaking into a building and they’re gonna commit a crime inside and then you’re gonna stream it inside,” she continued. “That fact pattern is much more dubious than how you put it, and so I think we’re investigating our facts.”
Dhillon concluded, “Mr. Lemon has put several hours of video on the internet yesterday, saying a variety of things, and you know, if I were his lawyer, I would probably say, you know, maybe you should lawyer up before you do things like this.”
“Anybody who doesn’t know who Harmeet Dhillon really is, that would have put the fear of God in me,” replied Beck. “If I were Don Lemon and I heard Harmeet Dhillon say that, I’d be like, ‘Holy cow, I’m going to prison,’ ’cause she does not mess around.”
After Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche threatened to prosecute the protesters who took part in a storming of a Minneapolis church service on Sunday, he suggested that Lemon – who was recording the incident as a journalist and sympathizer – would be no exception.
“He doesn’t get a ‘get out of jail free’ card because he’s self-described as a journalist,” said Blanche. “The freedom of the press extends to a lot of different areas. It does not extend to somebody just trespassing and being embedded with a group of rioters and being part of a group that storms a church.”
He continued, “So, as our assistant attorney general said yesterday, we are absolutely investigating that conduct and the fact that that man, that Mr. Lemon thought that was a good idea to do that, and then to race away from it saying it was freedom of the press, we’ll see. We’ll see.”
Watch above via Glenn Beck.
