Howard Blum

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.

I mean, we all know that.

He might as well be a videographer for the group.

He was capturing what they did for their benefit.

A very interesting comment you made back before we started the discussion, mentioning his finances, him pitching for people to join his YouTube channel as a subscriber and to help support their independent journalism.

That opens up all the finances of his enterprise,

to not just discovery efforts, but it's all relevant now in the trial.

Why was he there?

Was he there for First Amendment?

Or was he there for the financial wellbeing of his organization, trying to build it and promote it?

And this was just, it was just a content opportunity.

That's not going anywhere.