Breaking News from Pod Save America - Trump ARRESTS Don Lemon In MASSIVE ASSAULT On First Amendment

Episode Date: January 30, 2026

Trump orders the arrest of Don Lemon and other journalists in a shocking assault on the First Amendment, as new documents emerge from the Epstein files. Tommy Vietor and Dan Pfeiffer break down the latest. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, Dan, we got a flood of breaking news this morning. Former CNN journalist Don Lemon has been arrested for entering a church with protesters in Minnesota. Georgia Fort, another independent journalist and the vice president of the Minnesota National Association of Black Journalists was also arrested by federal agents this morning. On top of that, the Trump administration has dumped out millions of new Epstein files. And then Trump said he's suing the IRS for $10 billion. And we also have a new FedShare. We got a new FedShare. We got a new Fed Share. Great.

So a little thing. Okay, we're going to try to get through all of this. So here's the incident that apparently got Don Lemon arrested. Let's watch. What do you think of this? I mean, this is unacceptable. It's shameful. It's shameful to interrupt a public gathering of Christians in worship.

But there were folks who are. I have to take care of my flock. Listen, we live in a, there's a constitution in the First Amendment to freedom of speech and freedom to assemble and protest. We're here to worship. We're here to worship Jesus. because that's the hope of these cities. That's the hope of the world is Jesus Christ.

I want to be very respectful. Please don't push me, though. We're here. We're here to worship Jesus. That's why we're here. That's why we're here. That's what we're about. Don't you think Jesus would be understanding and love these folks?

We're about spreading the love of Jesus. But did you try to talk to them as a Christian? No one is willing to talk. Okay. I have to take care of my church and my family. So I asked this you actually would also leave this building. You don't want us to chronicle or whatever. Unless you're here to worship.

I'm always worship. I'm a Christian. We're here to worship. We're here to worship. Okay. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Okay, Dan, so I just want to stipulate that I think entering a church to protest is a very bad idea.

No one should do that. That interview is just weird and tense, but like the idea that you would arrest a journalist for covering the protest seems insane to me in like an obvious First Amendment violation. But I don't know. What are you been thinking watching this? Yeah. I mean, if you watch all of the coverage, Don Lemon is embedded with these protests. He goes in with them. he says on the video that is, I guess, evidence in this case, that he is not part of the protest.

He's there to cover the protest. Here he is interviewing the people being protested, not just he's not participating in the protest. And as of right now, we don't know exactly what the reason for Don Lemon's arrest is related to this. They have not unsealed the indictment. The only reason we know there was even an indictment was that the White House. Political Director tweeted out that there was an indictment? Yeah. Which is not something, I mean, I know we're well past the Independent Department of Justice

here, but that's not something the White House Political Director should ever know. But yeah, it seems very sketchy. And that's why a judge refused to allow this to happen last week. And then a appeals court judge denied the Trump administration's in motion to try to force that judge to issue the arrest warrant. It's clear that the Trump administration wants this to be a huge issue in story. I mean, Pam Bondi was tweeting about how these individuals, four journalists, were arrested at her direction. She also released a video of it as well.

So they want coverage of this. They want the conversation about Minnesota to be about, you know, the protesters, not, you know, what the ICE agents are doing to people. But, you know, it's also just like, look, hypocrisy doesn't matter anymore, I guess. But it's galling that the maga position is that you arrest journalists who cover a protest inside a church. But you pardon everyone who violently storms the Capitol on January 6th. You know, it's like, okay, what are we doing here? Or your entire thing has been about, like, during the campaign and what got all Elon Musk and all these people to support you was this idea that you were going to be a first amendment absolutist.

Free speech, absolutist. Yeah. Remember that? Remember those days? Now they arrest you for writing op-eds and they try to deport you. And, you know, God help us all. Also, Dan, for all the change, for all the talk of like a change in Trump's tone that may have existed for 24, 48 hours.

This morning he called Alex Prattie, quote, an agitator and perhaps an insurrectionist. He's referring to this video of Prattie kicking an ice vehicle and busting the taillight. And then he said in response to the ice officer was, quote, calm and cool, which, again, we know that's not true because Alex Prattie's rib was broken in the altercation that followed that incident. So, you know, it seems like Trump saw that video and is now back to attacking the protesters themselves, even Alex Priddy. Attacting the victim who was killed by agents working at his behest. Yeah. So dark, dark stuff. Here's video of independent Minnesota journalist Georgia Fort being arrested with those same charges as Don Lemon. Yes. Okay. Okay. Well, this is really scary.

There's kids in the house. You guys have not been really friendly in the community. And to me, this seems a little, can I finish, sir? This seems, can I finish? Can I finish? Get your phone. This seems a little bit aggressive to have all these cars in our condesack, two or three agents, and now I saw the one disappear to the back. So to me, this is a little aggressive to just serve a warrant.

slide the warrant, let me see the warrant. So, you know, first of all, like, just imagine how terrifying that is. Imagine your home, you're asleep, your kids for upstairs, and all of a sudden there's a bunch of federal agents pounding at your door, and there's all these cars outside. Like, clearly, clearly this woman poses no threat to these individuals. You don't need a bunch of squad cars and a bunch of agents. Like, it's designed to scare her.

But also, Dan, like these arrests at Don Lemon and Georgia Fort, they're not happening in a vacuum, right? The FBI searched the home of a Washington Post, reporter and they seized her phone and laptop a few weeks ago of the Pentagon tried to get the Pentagon Press Corps to sign a document that essentially said anything they reported had to be pre-approved by you know Pete Hegseth and his goons so there's there's just this like ongoing massive assault on the First Amendment by as you said earlier the president who ran on being a free speech absolutist just a couple things

about this one what is really I think telling is the the fact that we have a video of this exchange. And the reason of a video of this exchange is because the only way to hold this administration accountable for anything that these agents are doing is to capture it on video. So an ICA agent shows up at your house and someone has to film the exchange in case they burst down the door at any moment. They assault someone. You just don't know because we know that they will lie about things caught on video. So the things that aren't caught on video is fair game that anything can happen. And then also, it is notable. that these are independent journalists here in Don Lemon and Georgia Fort, that those people are most

at risk. And Don Lemon, I'm sure, has more resources. He's famous. He was at CNN for a very long time. But there are a lot of people out there who are content creators, independent journalists, who are out there reporting. And they do not have the benefit of a huge multinational corporation or First Amendment lawyers on speed dial to help them.

So they're now going to, they see this. And they're going to have to make decisions every single. day about what is what what story is worth the risk what reporting that you do will end up with not just you being sued by a bunch you know in a defamation suit from the president of United States trying to bankrupt you because you had a bad Iowa poll or whatever else but we'll end up with Homeland Security agents masked showing up at your door in the dark to arrest you and take you to jail and now you have a legal case that you have to fund yourself And so I think this is there is a incredibly chilling effect to this level of government censorship that I think will be very impactful in the media environment we're in where there are so so much of the information we're getting from these protests is from independent journalists.

I think that's such an important point because some people might be watching that and think, look, she's going to get off, right? This is clearly a First Amendment violation. There's no way. Judge is going to throw this out. Maybe. But the process is the punishment, right? The fear, the anxiety, the time you spend, the unbelievable resource suck, right? Like, you're going up against the federal government.

They have unlimited lawyers in time and money to go after you and try to convict you of a crime if they want to. And you are on your own. And hopefully, you know, like fire or some great organization will provide some sort of pro bono attorney access to these individuals, but it's not guaranteed. Pod Save America is brought to you by Cook Unity. I've been using Cook Unity forever for years, long before they ever. wants with this podcast. It is fantastic. Most of my meals are from Cook Unity. They deliver chef-designed meals that balance real flavor, nutrition, and convenience with no cooking or planning required. They also let you choose what works for you with collections like protein

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Here is Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche talking about this latest tranche. I can assure that we complied with the statute. We complied with the act. there is no, we did not protect President Trump, we didn't protect or not protect anybody. I mean, I think that we, that there's a hunger or a thirst for information that I do not think will be satisfied by the review of these documents. And there's, it's not, there's nothing I can do about that. But President Trump, of all the people in Washington, D.C., and around this country, that have said for years, the same consistent message about Jeffrey Epstein is President Trump.

And so there's not been a change of course or anything. And certainly his direction to the American people and the Department of Justice, sorry, his direction to the Department of Justice was to be as transparent, release the files, be as transparent as we can. And that's exactly what we did. Dan, first question for you, did they comply with the statute as far as you know? Not sure. And Rokana, who was the co-author of the statute,

who has some real questions about this. They found six million documents that were potentially responsive, or six million pages were the documents that were potentially responsive to the law. They're releasing three million of those. They use several exceptions, including attorney crime and privilege, a few other ones in there to justify it. But it's, you know, I think there will be some essentially some court action to determine whether they left out files.

And the truth of the matter is, we know this, we've known this for a long time, but this has been, it could not have been more evident in the last few weeks. It's you can't trust a single word these people said. No, not one. Right. Like the idea, like your worst fears that they're like going through and finding the documents that are bad for them and putting them in their pocket and destroying them or doctoring them would have seemed, it shouldn't have seemed crazy, but it would have seemed crazy to say that a few weeks ago. But the way they have lied about Renee Good, Alex Pruddy and everything else happening in Minneapolis is proof that you can trust nothing they say. It's mushrooms with me, Maddie Matheson. You know what's better than thinking about dinner too hard? Not stop that. and just choose mushrooms.

Five minutes. Done. Dinner's that easy and you feel like a genius. It's not magic. It's mushrooms. Stop stressing at mushroomcouncil.com. Yeah, that's right. I mean, like, certainly they didn't comply with the time frame for the release of all of these documents.

Oh, no. Also, they are six weeks late. That said, like on a human level, like I understand how hard it is to review, you know, redact like six million documents, right? Like there's just like a human capacity challenge here. Although, again, you know, Blanche goes up there, Trump's former personal attorney and says, no one has been more consistent in his language about, you know, Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump's like, what the fuck are you talking about, man? Like this guy used to denounce Epstein and say he was Bill Clinton's buddy and say this was a huge deal and you release all the files.

And then he told us to shut up and get over it when everyone realized that Donald Trump was the closest person to Jeffrey and Epstein maybe living. He directed his Department of Justice to not release the files. He lobbied Congress to keep them from passing a law not to release files. so much so that the Speaker of the House recessed the Congress early twice to avoid a vote on it. And then punished publicly and threatened primary challenges against the Republicans who've signed the discharge petition that forced the vote to be the vote to happen that were forced the release of the files. So he did everything in his power and took on a tremendous amount of political water in pain to prevent these files from coming out. Yeah, it is absurd. So we're all kind of racing to look through this stuff.

I mean, we're recording this at 10.30 a.m. Pacific time. One thing I already saw was email traffic between Jeffrey Epstein and Elon Musk, where Elon apparently asked, like, when would be a good time to visit the island? And Epstein says, I'll send the helicopter for you. And this, again, was in 2013, which is long after Jeffrey Epstein was charged in Florida. So I guess I didn't really realize how deep the relationship between Elon Musk and Jeffrey Epstein apparently is. But my God. Yeah, I mean, I was surprised with that too.

So maybe when Elon Musk told, announced to the world that Trump was in the Epstein files, he knew what he was talking about. Yeah, yeah. That was news to me. I've also read reports, although I have not seen the documents yet, that there is a bevy of text between Steve Bannon and Jeffrey Epstein, including some trashing Trump.

Yes. So I'm excited to dig in and read those and see what they have said. Kyle Cheney, I think of Politico reported that. And folks should know, like Steve Bannon, reportedly was working on some sort of like maybe you call it a documentary but really more of like a PR rehabilitation exercise with Jeffrey Epstein like they were they seemingly were very very close Epstein according to other documents that have come out had suggested that he might fund Bannon's effort to create these like vast right wing networks all over the world so there's a lot

of connective tissue there between Bannon and Jeffrey Epstein that I think really has not been explored I would like to see it explored personally yeah me too here's my question interview you, Tommy. Yes. Are the Epstein files now the distraction, not the thing we're distracting from? Are they releasing the Epstein files to distract from Minneapolis? Oh, man. Are we distracting from the Don Lemon arrest?

Is the Don Lemon arrest distracted for the Epstein files, which are distracting from what's happening in Minnesota? We got like 5D chest of distractions. I don't even know anymore. Yeah, there's so much. There's one other one I wanted to mention, Dan, which is there's, again, there's like a bunch of very lurid and completely unconfirmed allegations of sexual misconduct by Donald Trump himself.

Like I'm very wary of all of that, but, you know, it's in these documents. Then there's an email from September 28th, 2012 that says, quote, what does J.E., I assume Jeffrey Epstein, think of going to Mar-a-Lago after Christmas instead of his island? So again, 2012 is pretty late for Donald Trump to be welcoming Jeffrey Epstein at his island, given that, you know, he was prosecuted, what, in the late 90s in Florida? Yeah, and this is long after Trump's professed timeline of when he stopped speaking. Now, you can visit Mar-a-Lago and not hang out with Trump. it is a club of sorts, I guess.

Right. But not if you're banned. What's that? Not if you're banned by the owner. That's true. Yes. It does raise questions about the banned narrative. So another little thread for reporters to pull on in the coming days here.

Yeah, that's what's interesting by these documents. I mean, like, there may not be like giant smoking guns in any of these dumps, but it's a ton of additional information for really good journalists to pull on and learn more. Finally, Dan, Trump says he's going to sue the IRS for $10 billion. This is over the leak. of his tax return. Do we just assume this is going to be one of those situations where Donald Trump is able to then settle with himself for some massive, you know, payout? That is, that is a great concern that he will, that it will be his personal attorney who will be making

decisions about whether the Department of Justice should settle this case and give him a bunch of taxpayer dollars. It just, it's so fucking crazy that this happens routinely. Yeah, it is incredibly, it is so corrupt that it's almost hard to imagine. And there's almost nothing to stop him from doing it. Yeah. All right. Well, we're going to continue going through all of his information and we'll do more of these videos if we learn more.

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