Howard Blum

They made comments that the courts viewed.

Correct.

Expressions of First Amendment opinion.

And the court viewed that sympathy with the protesters as setting them apart from other journalists.

And I represent one of them, Steve Baker, who now works for Glenn Beck and Blaze.

We made a motion to dismiss the case against him on the basis of selective prosecution.

We identified 60 credentialed and freelance journalists

who had not been prosecuted, whereas Steve was singled out and prosecuted.

And Judge Cooper in D.C.

focused on some of Steve's commentary during the event and after the event and said, well, you know, you really were, you know, your comments express an intention to sort of go along and be part of the protest.

Well, I got to tell you, I'm watching the video you're showing and a lot of that I had not seen before.

And I'm just chuckling to myself, thinking back to my 21 years as a prosecutor and 90 trials and thinking he can't get on the stand.

He can't get on the stand and defend himself because he's going to have to eat all these words in front of a jury.

um plus what we don't know yet you know what we don't know yet which i think we will see maybe in the indictment today and certainly we'll see it in the weeks ahead is all the communications that the government now has their hands on emails text messages other kinds of communications not on video uh as he did but just his his you know back and forth before and after the event not just with the organizers the event but anything he said to anybody else

Well, the Constitution guarantees the free exercise of religion in the same First Amendment.

So there's absolutely no basis for Don Lemon to claim that his First Amendment right as a member of the press is somehow superior to the First Amendment rights of all those people inside.

to exercise, freely exercise the religion.

And frankly, I think the prosecutor or the pastor would have been perfectly within his rights to shove Don Lemon out of the church.

It's a bit of self-help, but there would have been nothing wrong with that in my view.

And Don Lemon's not there as a member of the press.