Lemon Law

12 snips

Jan 31, 2026

They unpack how prosecutors pursued an unusual rush to arrest Don Lemon and the courts pushed back. They examine fights over ICE ignoring habeas orders and how limits on nationwide injunctions are clogging immigration cases. They cover Minnesota’s tense federal-state disputes over evidence and a 10th Amendment claim. They also touch on non-disparagement threats, a subpoena for Jeffrey Toobin, and a Silicon Valley trial misstep.

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INSIGHT

Magistrate Rejections Are Highly Unusual

Federal magistrate judges rarely reject arrest-warrant applications, making this Don Lemon episode notable.
The DOJ's usual remedies are to present a grand jury or provide a stronger affidavit rather than seek immediate judicial overruling.

ANECDOTE

DOJ Sought Emergency Mandamus

The DOJ sought extraordinary emergency relief to overturn the magistrate's rejection and get immediate arrests.
They even asked the Eighth Circuit for mandamus, arguing imminent church invasions required urgent arrests.

INSIGHT

District Review Of Magistrates Is Rare

Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz found DOJ's attempt to have a district judge overrule a magistrate virtually unheard-of.
The normal course is indictment or a better affidavit, not asking a district judge to second-guess a magistrate's probable-cause decision.

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This week Ken and Josh discuss how the Feds got an arrest warrant for Don Lemon after all. Before prosecutors got the grand jury indictment, they tried through some really irregular channels to get Lemon arrested more quickly. When a magistrate judge rejected an arrest warrant application for Lemon last week, rather than applying again or proceeding to the grand jury, prosecutors asked Judge Patrick Schiltz to overrule the magistrate, then asked an appellate panel to force Schiltz to rule on their motion right away, fearing that if Lemon wasn’t arrested immediately, there would be an epidemic of illegal church invasions. Schiltz took exception to this, and the appeals panel backed him up, though one of the appellate judges remarked that he thought all the arrest warrants were sufficiently supported but the government just didn’t need the weird emergency relief it was seeking.

Also this week: we look at federal judges (including Schiltz) who are incensed that ICE isn’t promptly complying with their habeas corpus orders, and how this mess is downstream of rules that prohibit nationwide injunctions and are clogging some courts with individual lawsuits seeking relief from immigration detentions. We have an update on Minnesota’s 10th Amendment case — Judge Kate Menendez appears skeptical that she is in a position to provide the sweeping relief the state wants, though she does want more briefing on the threat letter from Attorney General Pam Bondi to the state. And in another case, an order from Menendez restricting ICE tactics has been stayed.

In non-ICE news, it appears likely that Jeffrey Toobin will have to testify at Tom Goldstein’s criminal trial, though he has a good argument for limiting his testimony to fairly boring topics. Candace Owens says Turning Point USA has sent her a letter threatening to enforce a non-disparagement agreement they say she has violated by spreading conspiracy theories about Charlie Kirk’s death. And a defendant in Northern California called up a local news station during her trial to protest that she only threw parties where she gave alcohol to minors because of COVID.

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