Moment cops push reporter covering Ohio train derailment to the ground and arrest him

A reporter covering the Ohio train derailment and subsequent toxic chemical release was forced to the ground and arrested on air on Wednesday at a press briefing.

Evan Lambert, a national correspondent for NewsNation was recording a live shot inside a gymnasium right as Ohio Governor Mike DeWine’s press conference began around 5.15pm.

After getting into a dispute about how loud he was speaking, two East Palestine police officers walked Lambert into a vestibule area before forcing him to the ground and handcuffing him.

‘The reason why he is where he is, is that he refused to leave,’ one of the officers tells the cameraman. ‘That’s his own fault.’

‘This is what it’s like to be a black reporter in 2023,’ Lambert says as the two officers detain him.

They then walked him out of the building and into a Columbiana County Sheriff’s Department van.

Lambert spent about five hours in jail without bond before being released around 10pm. He was later charged with disorderly conduct and criminal trespassing, the latter of which carries with it a penalty of 30 days in jail.

‘I’m doing fine right now. It’s been an extremely long day,’ Lambert told a NewsNation anchor after his release. ‘No journalist expects to be arrested when you’re doing your job, and I think that’s really important that that doesn’t happen in our country.’

‘It is outrageous that local law enforcement in Ohio would arrest and charge a journalist for simply doing his job and reporting live from a press conference,’ said Katherine Jacobsen, a director for the Committee to Protect Journalists. ‘There is no reason why a journalist should be manhandled while reporting the nightly news.’

Reporters at the press conference immediately asked Governor DeWine about the situation that unfolded on the other side of the gym. DeWine said that it was his policy to allow networks to record standup interviews at his briefings.

‘They have every right to do that,’ DeWine said. ‘If someone was stopped from doing that or told they could not do that, that was wrong. It was nothing that I authorized, and certainly it is something I would not want to see happen.’

Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown also called the arrest ‘unacceptable.’

‘Journalists have an inalienable right to report in this country,’ he said in a statement on Twitter. ‘Ohioans deserve to know what’s going to change to make sure this doesn’t happen again.’

Days after the arrest, body camera footage and sworn testimony obtained by WKYC have revealed that the dispute started after Ohio National Guard General John Harris approached Lambert in the middle of his broadcast.

The general was complaining about Lambert shooting a live broadcast while the press conference began, according to his testimony to police.

‘We had a live shot scheduled for 5.15,’ NewsNation photographer Preston Swigart later told the network. ‘It was locked in stone. A coincidence of all coincidences, the governor walks out at 5.15. There’s nothing we can do about it.’

Although there is no sound in the beginning of the clip, Harris can clearly be seen placing his left hand on Lambert’s chest and aggressively pointing in his face with his right hand.

However in his testimony, Harris says that Lambert ‘became enraged’ and he ‘stared at me while aggressively lurching at me.’

‘At that point I was convinced he was going to do harm to me. I instinctively put my hands to his chest to keep him from bumping into me, which I felt was inevitable if I had not protected myself,’ Harris said.

General Harris walks off, but Lambert continues arguing as two East Palestine officers prevent him from going back to the press conference. Lambert can also be heard talking about pressing charges against the general after he pushed him aside.

‘I am trying to do my job, and he escalated it with me,’ Lambert tells the officers.

NewsNation disputes the general’s account and is prepared to stand behind Lambert’s conduct. ‘The many videos of this incident taken by bystanders peak for themselves,’ NewsNation president Michael Corn said on Thursday. ‘We will let people draw their own conclusions about how this incident was handled by the officers involved.’

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