The latest court filing highlighting the Trump administration’s use of the criminal law to punish critics came from journalist Don Lemon, whose lawyers filed a motion Friday seeking to dismiss his Minnesota charges as unconstitutionally vindictive.

President Donald Trump’s “animosity towards Don Lemon and his reporting is well-documented, stretching back over a decade,” they began their motion to dismiss the indictment, which they called punishment for their client’s “First Amendment protected reporting on protests related to Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota.”

The indictment charges Lemon and 38 other people in connection with a January incident at a church in St. Paul. The Justice Department alleged that a group of “agitators,” including the charged defendants, entered the church in a “coordinated takeover-style attack and engaged in acts of oppression, intimidation, threats, interference, and physical obstruction.”

In Friday’s motion to dismiss, the former CNN anchor’s lawyers recalled that the White House “made a mockery” of his arrest with a social media post accompanied by his picture that said, “When life gives you lemons… ”

“While the government may think it has made lemonade, all it has really made is a grave constitutional violation by arresting a journalist in the middle of the night for his coverage of a matter of public concern,” Lemon’s lawyers argued. They said he isn’t asking for special protections but rather is “simply playing the role the First Amendment to the Constitution provided him as a journalist covering newsworthy events.”

If the Minnesota court isn’t immediately inclined to dismiss the indictment, then Lemon wants permission to press the matter further with discovery and an evidentiary hearing into the government’s motive and procedures behind the charges. His lawyers noted that a Tennessee court took that incremental approach in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who saw his indictment ultimately dismissed on vindictive prosecution grounds. Abrego’s judge cited the “tainted investigation” by Todd Blanche, Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer who is now on the verge of being confirmed by the GOP-controlled Senate as the nation’s top law enforcement officer.

Lemon’s lawyers noted that prosecutorial decisions have traditionally been afforded deference under a “presumption of regularity,” but judges in Minnesota and around the country have found that the administration has been undermining that presumption.

“Even more telling, multiple judges in this District have found that the government is not entitled to the presumption of regularity specifically because of apparent attempts to punish the exercise of First Amendment rights,” they wrote.

They separately moved to dismiss the charges in other motions filed Friday on the grounds that the allegations don’t amount to a crime and violate the First Amendment if they do, and that the charges suffer from other statutory and constitutional deficiencies.

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