Don Lemon Tells His Arrest Story on 'Kimmel,' Reveals What Happened in Moments Before Get Handcuffed

Don Lemon is opening up about what happened on the night that he was arrested.

The 59-year-old journalist made an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Monday (February 2) to tell the story in his own words.

Don was taken into custody on late Thursday night while in Los Angeles covering the Grammy Awards. The arrest is in connection with his presence at St. Paul Church in Mineeapolis on January 18, where it was believed one of the pastors was an ICE official.

Don was charged with federal civil rights crimes in connection to the anti-ICE protest that disrupted a service at a Minnesota church, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said. He is charged with conspiracy and interfering with the First Amendment rights of worshipers at the Cities Church in St. Paul, where an ICE official serves as a pastor. Another journalist and two protestors were also arrested in Minnesota.

So, what happened when he was arrested?

Keep reading to find out more…

Don said that he went to the Black Music Collective’s Grammys event on Thursday night and then went back to his hotel after the party.

“I got back to the hotel. I had my swag bag from the [party], and I was walking up to the room,” Don said. “I pressed the elevator button and all of a sudden, I feel myself being jostled and people trying to grab me and put me in handcuffs. And I said, ‘What are you doing here?’ They said, ‘We came to arrest you.’ I said, ‘Who are you?’ Finally, they identified. I said, ‘If you are who you are, where’s the warrant?’ They didn’t have the warrant. So, they had to wait for someone outside, an FBI guy to come in, to show me a warrant on a cell phone.”

Don said that his husband Tim Malone was asleep in the hotel room when the arrest happened. The only way Tim found out about what was happening was because Don asked an agent to bring his bracelet, which was colliding with the handcuffs, to his hotel room.

Don said that he’s doing “okay.”

“I’m not going to let them steal my joy, but this is very serious. I mean, these are federal criminal charges,” he said.

“I’m in the middle of this, so I can’t say a lot,” he added. “There’s a lot that I cannot say, but what I will say is that I’m not a protester. I went there to be a journalist. I went there to chronicle and document and record what was happening. I was following that one group around. And so that’s what I did. I reported on them. But I do think that there is a difference between a protester and a journalist.”

Don walked the red carpet with his husband at the Grammys.