Don Lemon Arrested Over Minnesota Church Protest After Judge Previously Rejected Charge

Former CNN anchor Don Lemon was arrested Thursday night in a federal criminal case stemming from a protest at a Minnesota church, his attorney confirmed, prompting outrage from press freedom groups and some Democrats who say it is an attack of the First Amendment.

Federal prosecutors previously tried to charge Lemon, but the chief federal judge in Minneapolis declined to allow the case because he saw no probable cause to arrest the longtime journalist.

Lemon has maintained he was acting solely in that role when he entered the church in St. Paul along with anti-immigration-enforcement protesters who disrupted a Sunday service on Jan. 18. Three of the protesters were arrested and charged for their roles in the demonstration prior to the most recent round of arrests.

“Don has been a journalist for 30 years, and his constitutionally protected work in Minneapolis was no different than what he has always done,” Lemon’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, said in a statement.

The criminal case against Lemon sets up the biggest First Amendment showdown of President Donald Trump’s presidency.

Criminal charges against journalists over their work activities are extraordinarily rare. Reporters have occasionally been jailed for contempt when they've refused to testify about their sources, but prosecutors typically do not seek to charge reporters or photographers who are present for a demonstration that leads to arrests.

Trump has criticized Lemon in crude terms for years and appeared to call for his arrest over the church incident. “I saw him the way he walked in that church. It was terrible,” Trump said last week, also slamming Lemon as a “loser” and “lightweight.”

In a post Friday morning on X, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced the arrest of Lemon and three others in connection with what she called the “attack” on the Cities Church in St. Paul.

One of those arrested, Georgia Fort, said she is an independent journalist who was reporting during the church protest.

“As a member of the press, I filmed the church protest a few weeks ago and now I'm being arrested for that," Fort said in a video posted on Facebook. "It's hard to understand how we have a Constitution, Constitutional rights, when we can just be arrested for being a member of the press."

CNN, where Lemon worked for 17 years until an abrupt ouster in 2023, said his arrest "raises profoundly concerning questions about press freedom and the First Amendment" in a statement Friday.

"The First Amendment in the United States protects journalists who bear witness to news and events as they unfold, ensuring they can report freely in the public interest, and the DOJ’s attempts to violate those rights is unacceptable," the network wrote. "We will be following this case closely."

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche scheduled a rare press conference for later Friday.

Minnesota has been rocked in recent weeks by the killing of two American protesters by federal immigration agents, coming amid a surge in immigration enforcement activity directed by the White House.

The White House has said it may pare back its immigration operations in the state amid public outcry, sidelining some of its leaders — including Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino.

Federal prosecutors in Minnesota initially sought to arrest Lemon, one of his producers and six other people through a criminal complaint charging them with conspiring to interfere with the civil rights of congregants at the church and with violating the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances or FACE Act, which also covers houses of worship.

While Magistrate Judge Douglas Micko signed off on one of the charges against three of the protesters, he refused to sign arrest warrants for Lemon, his producer and four others prosecutors sought to charge. Prosecutors appealed that decision to U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz, who declined to immediately reverse the magistrate’s decision.

“The government lumps all eight protestors together and says things that are true of some but not all of them,” the chief judge wrote. “Two of the five protestors were not protestors at all; instead, they were a journalist and his producer. There is no evidence that those two engaged in any criminal behavior or conspired to do so.”

Prosecutors appealed to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis. A three-judge panel declined to force a ruling from Schiltz. However, one of the judges assigned to the appeal, Trump appointee Steven Grasz, said that prosecutors had “clearly [established] probable cause” to arrest Lemon and the four others the magistrate refused to charge.

Prosecutors eventually dropped their request for a criminal complaint against Lemon, apparently choosing to pursue another route Schiltz indicated was open to them: seeking an indictment from a grand jury. Fort said in her video Friday that she’d been told she was indicted by a grand jury.

White House aide James Blair seemingly confirmed in a post on X that Lemon was indicted by a federal grand jury, even though charges against the journalist weren't on the public docket at the time of his post.

Lemon was arrested in Los Angeles, where he was covering the Grammy Awards. He’s expected to make his first court appearance there.

The showdown with Schiltz revealed a rupture between the Justice Department and the judges on Minnesota’s federal District Court stemming from the Trump administration’s massive immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities. The chief judge has since accused the administration of rampant violations of court orders by keeping immigrants detained even after judges had ordered their release.

Democrats and First Amendment advocates responded with alarm to Lemon’s arrest, which they decried as yet another attempt by the president to circumvent press freedom.

"There is zero basis to arrest him and he should be freed immediately," House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wrote on X Friday. "The Trump Justice Department is illegitimate and these extremists will all be held accountable for their crimes against the Constitution."

Seth Stern, chief of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, in a statement Friday called the arrests of both Lemon and Fort "clear warning shots aimed at other journalists."

"The unmistakable message is that journalists must tread cautiously because the government is looking for any way to target them," he wrote. "Fort’s arrest is meant to instill the same fear in local independent journalists as big names like Lemon."