The indictment in U.S. v. Levy-Armstrong has been unsealed; I excerpted the key allegations as to the disruption itself in this post. But what about Don Lemon, the former longtime CNN reporter who livestreamed the disruption?
If a person breaks a speech-neutral law in order to record and publish something, his motivation generally doesn't give him any First Amendment right to break the law. That's true as to trespass laws, wiretapping laws, and more. And that's true whether the person is working for a professional news outlet or just acting on his own.
At the same time, the government still has to show all the elements of the crime as to each defendant, and sometimes it might be unable to do that as to the person who is just trying to report on the event. An example: The crime of burglary generally (to oversimplify) requires unlawfully entering onto property with the intent to commit a further crime there, often theft. If a gang of people break into a store in order to steal from it, they may well be guilty of commercial burglary.
