Disgraced former CNN anchor Don Lemon has claimed that he repeatedly tried to surrender to the feds before he was handcuffed in a public bid to “embarrass” and “intimidate” him.
Lemon told “Jimmy Kimmel Live” late Monday that he contacted his attorney as soon as he knew the feds wanted to arrest him for being with anti-ICE protesters who stormed a Minnesota church during Sunday service last month.
“The attorney reached out to them [prosecutors] and said, basically, ‘I understand that you have an interest because your folks have been talking about it,’” he claimed during the late-night TV appearance.
Ex-CNN host Don Lemon recalled his arrest in Los Angeles during his appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” on Monday, Feb. 2, 2026. Jimmy Kimmel Live / YouTube“So, if you are serious about this, then let’s do it the right way. I think my attorney tried to contact them once, maybe twice –– that I could just go in and it would have to be just the folks who were just working there that day. They wouldn’t have to have all these people following me around.”
Because of those offers, Lemon said he was taken aback when agents swooped on him as he returned to his hotel room following a pre-Grammy Awards event.
“I was walking up to the room and I pressed the elevator button and all of a sudden I feel myself being jostled and people try to grab me and put me in handcuffs,” he said.
“I was trying to figure out what was going on to get my bearings. They dropped all my stuff. My glasses had fallen on the floor. I’m like I can’t read that,” he said of a warrant an FBI agent showed him on a phone. “So they had to pick my glasses up and I read it and still what does that mean?”
He said there “had to be maybe a dozen people” involved in his arrest, which he called “a waste” of resources.
“They want to embarrass you. They want to intimidate you. They want to instill fear, and so that’s why they did it that way,” he alleged.
He was hauled to a courthouse holding room before having his fingerprints taken, a mugshot, and the “whole nine yards twice.”
Lemon went viral for livestreaming coverage of an anti-ICE protest at St. Paul’s Cities Church. Don Lemon / YouTubeLemon claimed he couldn’t contact anyone while inside the holding room.
“Here’s the interesting thing: I didn’t have one phone call,” he told Kimmel.
“I asked them ‘Do I get my one phone call, Jimmy?’ They said, ‘No you don’t. You get to talk to your attorney whenever the court says that you can.’”
He tried to speak to his husband, Tim Malone, and his lawyer via his Apple Watch but the attempted calls went through to voicemail.
Lemon began by revealing that his attorney, Abbe Lowell, had reached out to the Justice Department before the arrest to discuss his client turning himself in, even as top DOJ officials publicly said they were seeking charges against him. Jimmy Kimmel Live / YouTubeLemon said he had to be escorted to the bathroom whenever he needed to go, and claimed the feds didn’t “treat him well.”
“Not by the guys who arrested me, obviously, but you know not all federal agents are the same,” he said.
Lemon has been charged with conspiracy to deprive rights and violating the FACE Act that protects worshippers. He is set to appear in court on Saturday.
Attorney General Pam Bondi previously said that Lemon was busted for being part of a “coordinated attack” on the church, where protesters believed a pastor also worked for ICE.
President Trump also called Lemon “a washup.”
“Probably from his standpoint, the best thing that could have happened to him,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One Saturday.
