Don Lemon was arrested. This statement from his attorney is real

In January 2026, local opposition to a surge of federal immigration agents in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area intensified after two U.S. citizens — Renee Good and Alex Pretti — were fatally shot during separate encounters with federal officers.

On Jan. 18, demonstrators entered Cities Church in St. Paul during Sunday service to protest the pastor’s role as leader of the local U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office. Federal authorities later made several arrests in connection with the protest.

More than a week later, independent journalist Jim Acosta shared (archived) what appeared to be a statement from Abbe Lowell, attorney for independent journalist and former CNN anchor Don Lemon, on X, reporting that federal agents had arrested Lemon in Los Angeles. Lemon had been reporting at the protest, and a federal judge previously rejected prosecutors’ initial bid to charge Lemon in connection with the incident.

Other accounts posted the same purported statement from Lowell about the arrest elsewhere (archived) on social media (archived). 

The statement read:

Don Lemon was taken into custody by federal agents last night in Los Angeles, where he was covering the Grammy awards. Don has been a journalist for 30 years, and his constitutionally protected work in Minneapolis was no different than what he has always done. The First Amendment exists to protect journalists whose role it is to shine light on the truth and hold those in power accountable. There is no more important time for people like Don to be doing this work. 

Instead of investigating the federal agents who killed two peaceful Minnesota protesters, the Trump Justice Department is devoting its time, attention and resources to this arrest, and that is the real indictment of wrongdoing in this case. This unprecedented attack on the First Amendment and transparent attempt to distract attention from the many crises facing this administration will not stand. Don will fight these charges vigorously and thoroughly in court.

Snopes readers searched the website to confirm whether Lemon’s arrest and the statement from his attorney were real.

The statement is authentic and was issued by Lemon’s attorney. It accurately reported that federal officials had arrested Lemon. Therefore, we’ve rated this claim true.

Lowell’s statement was posted directly to Lemon’s official social media accounts, including on Bluesky (archived), Threads (archived), Facebook (archived) and TikTok (archived). The formatting was similar to another statement from Lowell that Lemon posted to his social media accounts, such as Bluesky (archived) and Instagram (archived), when the Trump administration previously sought to arrest him over the protest.

The text of the most recent statement was also included in the description of a YouTube livestream about his arrest (archived) that aired on the account where Lemon hosts his show.

Attorney General Pam Bondi confirmed the arrests of Lemon and independent journalist Georgia Fort, as well as activists Trahern Crews and Jamael Lundy, in an X post on Jan. 30 (archived).

For further reading, Snopes has previously fact-checked many other stories regarding the surge of federal agents to Minnesota, as well as the killings of Good and Pretti.