Don Lemon assault accuser drops lawsuit against CNN host after ‘deep dive into my memory’

A lawsuit levelled against Don Lemon was dropped Monday after the Hamptons bartender who accused the CNN anchor of assaulting him at a Sag Habor tavern decided to retract his allegations.

The prime-time TV host has “categorically denied” the accusations that Dustin Hice, the plaintiff in the case, brought against him nearly three years ago, in which the bartender alleged that the reporter attacked him in a “demeaning, unprovoked, and offensive” manner at a bar in 2019.

Deadline reported on the court filing that withdrew the lawsuit on Monday, where Mr Hice issued a statement saying that after a “deep dive into my memory”, he had landed on not pursuing the charges against the CNN host as his recollections of the events weren’t as clear.

“After a lot of inner reflection and a deep dive into my memory, I have come to realise that my recollection of the events that occurred on the night in question when I first met CNN anchor Don Lemon were not what I thought they were when I filed this lawsuit,” Mr Hice said in the statement, sent out by his attorney, Robert Barnes. “As a result, I am dropping the case.”

The retraction of the lawsuit comes on the heels of Mr Hice being told by a federal judge back in March that he would have to pay $77,000 in attorney fees to Mr Lemon after the plaintiff repeatedly failed to turn over evidence during the discovery phase of the trial.

The judge presiding in that case, US Magistrate Judge Thomas Locke, said Mr Hice had done “nothing to preserve relevant evidence here and in fact got rid of some of it, whether or not on purpose”.

Further hampering Mr Hice’s case against the prime-time TV star were his two key witnesses, who, while testifying under oath, ended up contradicting what Mr Hice had alleged had occurred in the 2019 bar.

Mr Hice ended up removing these two witnesses from his list, but Mr Lemon’s counsel, Caroline Polisi, later added those same witnesses to her client’s defence list.

Both attorneys for the two men ended up filing a Stipulation of Voluntary Dismissal With Prejudice with the United States District Court on 2 May, meaning that Mr Hice, who is still required to pay the $77,000 of sanctions to Mr Lemon’s counsel, cannot take the CNN reporter to court again for the same complaint.

Responding to the case withdrawal, Mr Lemon’s attorney described how the “vulgar attack” on her client was from its inception a blatant case of a “crass money grab”.

She had advised Mr Lemon to “remain silent” throughout the proceedings, but the manner in which her client’s name was dragged through the media circus for the past few years has made for a “difficult journey for Don”.

“Thankfully, Mr. Hice was able to access his memory and recollect the version of events on the night when he approached Don Lemon,” Ms Polisi wrote in a statement, reported by Deadline.

“Out of respect for the judicial process and my advice, [Mr Lemon] has had to remain silent in the face of a malicious and vulgar attack on his character,” she said, before adding, “Unfortunately, being a gay Black man in the media, he has had to deal with these sorts of attacks for quite some time.”

In the 11 August 2019 filing against Mr Lemon, the plaintiff painted an explicit exchange between the two men, during which he alleged that the host “who was wearing a pair of shorts, sandals, and a t-shirt, put his hand down the front of his own shorts, and vigorously rubbed his genitalia, removed his hand and shoved his index and middle fingers into [Hice’s] moustache under [Hice’s] nose,” the 2019 lawsuit said. At the time, he was seeking punitive damages for “emotional pain and suffering”.

The media frenzy created by the lawsuit led to Mr Hice appearing on several primetime outlets, namely Fox News programs, and even landed an interview with former Fox News and NBC host Megyn Kelly on her podcast, The Megyn Kelly Show.

The Independent has reached out to Mr Lemon’s communications team for comment and Mr Hice’s legal team for comment on the lawsuit.

Ms Polisi acknowledged the “unethical” reporting that was spurned from this now dismissed case, adding that she hoped the many outlets who covered this lawsuit had “learned their lesson”.

“I hope that many in the media have learned their lesson misreporting the facts and jumping to conclusions,” she said. “The reporting on this story by many outlets has been a case-study in unethical and uninformed reporting.”