Former CNN host Don Lemon has been arrested after he entered a Minnesota church and filmed anti-immigration enforcement protesters as they disrupted a service.
Lemon, now an independent journalist, was taken into custody by federal agents on Thursday night while in Los Angeles covering the Grammy Awards, according to a statement from his lawyer Abbe Lowell.
“Don will fight these charges vigorously and thoroughly in court,” the attorney said. Lemon, 59, is due to appear in federal court in LA on Friday.
He went into the Cities Church in St Paul on 19 January with a group of protesters who said one of the pastors was an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official.
“Don has been a journalist for 30 years, and his constitutionally protected work in Minneapolis was no different than what he has always done,” Lowell said in a statement posted to his client’s Instagram account on Friday.
The lawyer added: “This unprecedented attack on the First Amendment and transparent attempt to distract attention from the many crises facing this administration will not stand.”
In his own defence, Lemon said in a recent video: “Once the protest started in the church, we did an act of journalism, which was report on it.”
US Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Friday that federal agents also arrested three others: Trahern Jeen Crews, local independent journalist Georgia Fort and Jamael Lydell Lundy.
She accused them and Lemon of participating in a “coordinated attack” on the church.
The exact charges the government will bring against Lemon is unclear.
The BBC has contacted the Department of Justice for comment.
President Donald Trump’s administration initially sought to charge eight people involved in the Minnesota church protest with conspiring to deprive rights and interfering with someone’s religious freedom in a house of worship.
But a magistrate judge who reviewed the evidence approved charges for only three of those involved, excluding Lemon.
The government challenged that decision, but an appeals court suggested prosecutors take the case to a federal grand jury – a panel of citizens that evaluates if there is enough evidence to charge someone in a case.
Lemon was fired from CNN in April 2023 after 17 years with the company. The morning show host had apologised for on-air comments that Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley, then 51, was past her prime.
In the Minnesota church protest, he live-streamed with anti-ICE protesters on YouTube. The broadcast began with Lemon standing with the group in a car park where he says: “This is an operation that is secret.
“I can’t tell you what is going to happen, but you’re going to watch it live unfold here on ‘The Don Lemon Show.'”
He followed the group – whom he called “resistance protesters” – into the church, initially without his camera operator.
His microphone picked up audio of a woman shouting “excuse me pastor”, as someone from the church appears to be speaking mid-service.
Protesters chant “Justice for Renee Good”, referring to the US citizen who was fatally shot in her vehicle on 7 January during a confrontation with an ICE officer in Minneapolis.
Footage showed a chaotic scene unfolding inside the church, which belongs to the Southern Baptist Convention, as protesters and members of the congregation shout at each other.
Lemon repeatedly says he is there as a journalist and is unaffiliated with demonstrators.
“We’re not part of the activists, but we’re here just reporting on them,” he says.
The pastor says: “This is unacceptable, it’s shameful. It’s shameful to interrupt a public gathering of Christians in worship.”
Harmeet Dhillon, of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, said during an interview with podcaster Megyn Kelly on Friday: “We’re going to pursue this to the ends of the Earth.”
Jim Acosta, Lemon’s former CNN colleague, wrote on social media in response to the arrest: “This is outrageous and cannot stand. The First Amendment is under attack in America!”
This is the second high-profile case of the Trump administration taking action against a journalist this month, raising the alarm of free speech advocates.
On 14 January, the FBI showed up unannounced to the home of a Washington Post journalist with a search warrant and seized her devices over the alleged leak of classified information.
Protests are continuing in Minnesota, where an operation by federal immigration agents has sparked confrontations that have left two US citizens dead: Renee Good, a mother-of-three, and Alex Pretti, a nurse.
Source: BBC
