Dan Abrams Predicts DOJ’s Case Against Don Lemon Will Fall Apart – And Make Him a ‘Hero’
Mediaite founder Dan Abrams delivered a blunt prediction that not only will the Justice Department’s case against Don Lemon utterly collapse, but that it will “be great” for him and he’ll emerge “as a hero” – despite the “pain” and “hassle.”
The take came on Friday, just hours after Attorney General Pam Bondi announced the former CNN anchor’s arrest in connection with protests at a St. Paul church. Earlier this month, Lemon, now an independent journalist, had livestreamed the scene as anti-ICE demonstrators disrupted the church service.
The coverage quickly drew backlash, including from President Donald Trump, who amplified calls online for Lemon to be jailed. Lemon insisted in return that he was there strictly in a journalistic capacity and took no part in the protest itself.
Speaking Friday on SiriusXM’s The Dan Abrams Show, however, Abrams declared that Bondi’s “case is going nowhere.”
From the outset, he rubbished that an arrest had happened in the first place and noted that a federal magistrate judge had already refused to sign arrest warrants over insufficient evidence, and that an appeals court also rejected the Justice Department’s attempt to force them through before prosecutors took the case to a grand jury instead.
“They got a federal grand jury to indict Lemon and the others,” he said, “which is not hard when you, again, remember, grand jury is no defense attorney, just the prosecutor, and if you’ve got prosecutors who are as corrupted as the prosecutors were dealing with these days, it’s not hard to believe.”
At the centre of the case is the Freedom of Access to Clinical Entrances (FACE) Act, a 1994 law originally aimed at blocking physical obstruction of abortion clinics and places of worship, and in a video statement on Friday Bondi claimed the charges were about the protection of “that sacred right” of religious freedom.
Abrams was unimpressed: “Please spare me the false outrage. How do we know that that’s BS? Because they went on X and started trolling Don Lemon, right? If this was about religious freedom, right? ‘Oh, it’s about religious [freedom], just about making sure people have access’ – they wouldn’t have been trolling Don Lemon on X, and yet that’s exactly what they did.”
The host then pointed to a “gloating” post from the White House’s official X account that included a mocking image of Lemon captioned “When Life Gives You Lemons,” complete with a chain emoji.
“It’s about owning the libs,” he added.
Dismantling prosecutors’ approach, Abrams made his boldest prediction: “The case is going to go nowhere! Nowhere. I said to someone today who is close to Don, I didn’t talk to Don today, I said to him, this is going to be great for Don Lemon because – it’s going to be a pain, be some expense, some hassle – but in the end, he’s going to emerge from this as a hero. And that’s in part because, number one, you would think the lesson has been learned, which is using the criminal justice system to go after someone, rightly or wrongly, can turn these people into heroes.”
“It helped Donald Trump enormously, the criminal cases that were brought against him. Bill Clinton became more popular after Ken Starr went after him,” he reasoned.
Lemon, Abrams suggested, will argue he was acting as a journalist, not interfering with worship, and that the case will be seen publicly not as a First Amendment dispute but as political retaliation.
He continued, “In the end, this is just about this corrupted Department of Justice going after their enemies. That’s what this is about. It’s not really about the First Amendment. And their defense is going to be he wasn’t trying to violate anyone’s civil rights or religious freedom. He was just giving the public information. That was his, that’s what he was doing there.”
“Don Lemon will not be convicted. Don Lemon will not go to jail,” Abrams said, giving his unequivocal take. “The question will only be how much hassle and effort will it take to get there.”
Watch above via SiriusXM.
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