DOJ Posts Touting Lemon Arrest Risk Eroding Credibility in Court

The Justice Department’s boasts on social media of federal charges against protesters and journalists in Minnesota is undermining the Trump administration’s credibility in court, legal ethics scholars said.

Attorney General Pam Bondi posted online Friday that journalist Don Lemon was among four people arrested for a “coordinated attack” on a Minnesota church. The post follows a judge’s scolding this week over Bondi sharing photos of protesters arrested in connection with the church incident.

The posts this week are the latest examples of how Bondi and other top administration officials have made social media engagement a fixture of DOJ prosecutions under President Donald Trump’s second term. The approach is a departure from prior administrations, when DOJ officials typically refrained from weighing in on ongoing cases, law professors said.

The push to score political points online, the professors say, ignores defendants’ presumption of innocence and other key legal principles that could force federal judges to rule against the administration.

DOJ has historically seen its role “as doing justice and serving the interests of the United States, which isn’t served by trying cases in the court of public opinion or acting as the President’s personal vengeance squad,” said Noah Rosenblum, a professor at NYU School of Law.

Federal Magistrate Judge Dulce Foster said in court Wednesday that she was “deeply disturbed” by Bondi sharing photos of some detained anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement protesters, according to a person present in the courtroom. Some in custody were photographed with their feet restrained at the ankles while standing next to federal officers, who had their backs to the camera.

“This conduct is not something that the court condones,” Foster said, according to the person at the hearing.

DOJ representatives didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Social Media Standards

Legal ethics scholars say top officials’ social media activity runs afoul of department rules intended to ensure fairness in prosecutions.

“The rules are meant to protect the integrity of an eventual trial by preventing lawyers from biasing the jury pool and protect people accused of crime from heightened public condemnation while they are presumed innocent in the eyes of the law,” said Bruce Green, director of Fordham School of Law’s Louis Stein Center for Law and Ethics and a former federal prosecutor.

DOJ’s manual governing social media engagement for department employees prohibits interactions “that may cause the public to perceive that their ability to be apolitical and impartial in the performance of their official duties is tainted.”

The manual does say DOJ’s social media policies aren’t meant to restrict assistant attorneys general or other department leaders “from engaging in public communications on social media to promote the Department’s work and further valid community engagement objectives.”

The tone of top officials’ posts, however, sends a message that the prosecutions “are designed to advance partisan political objectives, not to achieve justice, and further erodes government lawyers’ credibility,” Green said.

In response to Bondi’s announcement of Lemon’s arrest, a Justice Department spokesman replied with a doctored photo of the attorney general with laser eyes.

Alina Habba, a former acting US attorney in New Jersey who previously worked as a personal attorney for Trump, reposted Bondi’s announcement with a hammer emoji.

The post announcing Lemon’s arrest from the White House’s official X account included a photo of the journalist, with the caption, “when life gives you lemons,” along with a chains emoji.

Foster emphasized in court this week that Bondi’s posts with photos of detained protesters, whom Bondi claimed were “resisting and impeding our federal law enforcement agents,” hurt defendants’ presumption of innocence.

DOJ’s manual on media relations instructs DOJ personnel to refrain from disclosing a photo of a defendant “unless it serves a law enforcement function or unless the photograph is already part of the public record in the case.”

The posts this week are “another step in the Trump Administration’s undermining of the DOJ’s reputation for professionalism and integrity,” Rosenblum said in an email.

Selective Prosecution

The social media posts also give defendants like Lemon plenty of fodder to argue to get the prosecutions dismissed, law professors said.

“Government lawyers’ indifference to the ethical restrictions invites defendants to argue that the prosecutions are vindictive, the prosecutors are biased, and the proceedings are unfair,” Green said.

The White House initially said in its X post Lemon was arrested “for involvement in the St. Paul church riots.”

Lemon, a former CNN anchor who is now an independent journalist, covered the Jan. 18 protest at Cities Church that led to the arrest of protesters this week. He is scheduled to appear in federal court in Los Angeles on Friday.

Minnesota judges and a federal appeals court declined to sign off on earlier arrest warrants against Lemon, with one of those judges saying there was “no evidence” that Lemon and another journalist had “engaged in any criminal behavior or conspired to do so.”

Dhillon, who has attracted scrutiny for her use of social media to search for potential civil rights cases, reposted a description of Lemon by Mike Davis, former Republican chief counsel on nominations for the Senate Judiciary Committee. Davis referred to Lemon as one of “today’s klansmen,” who “storm churches and terrorize Christians.”

Abbe Lowell, Lemon’s lawyer, said Lemon plans to fight the charges, which Lowell characterized in an online statement as an “unprecedented attack on the First Amendment and transparent attempt to distract attention from the many crises facing this administration will not stand.”