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Don Lemon and another journalist, Georgia Fort, have been charged in connection with a protest that interrupted a worship service at a Minnesota church earlier this month, according to a federal indictment unsealed after a Minnesota grand jury. The case centers on allegations that the protest interfered with worshippers’ constitutional rights and that two federal civil-rights statutes could apply to the conduct described.
The protest was staged at Cities Church in St. Paul on Jan. 18 and involved a group upset that the head of a local U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office serves as a pastor. The interruption drew public denunciations from President Donald Trump, Attorney General Pam Bondi and other officials, along with many religious leaders.
Lemon and a local reporter were covering the protest at the church, the AP reported, including through Lemon’s livestream of the events. The indictment alleges that actions by those who entered the sanctuary—including what Lemon said during his live reporting—helped support the government’s theory of unlawful interference.
The charges against Lemon and Fort are especially troubling to legal experts and media groups who worry about a chilling effect on coverage, the AP said. David Harris, a University of Pittsburgh law professor who specializes in criminal law, told the AP that the charges against protesters are more tenable under statutes that prohibit disrupting the free exercise of worship, but he said the prospect of charging reporters is different.
Harris said the following: “Charging journalists for being there covering the disruption does not mean they were part of the disruption,” and he added, “Don Lemon and other journalists are the way that we the public are finding out what is happening in these spaces.” He also said, “They are our eyes and ears,” and concluded that the message being sent is that journalists “should feel intimidated from doing this.”
The AP described two key federal laws that prosecutors cited in complaints for people arrested and charged in the case. One is the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act—known as the FACE Act—which was passed in 1994 to help protect patients seeking care at abortion clinics, as well as the doctors and nurses who work there, from violence and obstruction targeting clinic entrances. The law also incorporated a Republican-sponsored clause that included penalties for disruptions of worship services.
According to the AP, the FACE Act has been the subject of political debate, including with the Trump administration last year scaling back prosecutions tied to alleged blockades of clinics. The AP reported that the U.S. Supreme Court refused last year to hear a challenge to the FACE Act’s constitutionality even after overturning Roe v. Wade, and that in 2025, 42 House Republicans co-sponsored legislation introduced by Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, to repeal the law. The AP also reported that the Justice Department invoked the FACE Act in a lawsuit involving demonstrators who protested outside a synagogue.
The second law prosecutors used is the federal Conspiracy Against Rights statute, which was enacted shortly after the Civil War and originally was meant to target vigilante groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. The AP said the law prohibits intimidating or otherwise preventing someone from exercising constitutional rights, and that it has been revised and used in other cases over time, including in prosecutions tied to the “Mississippi Burning” killings of civil rights workers in 1964, as well as cases involving church arsons, antisemitic intimidation, and witness tampering.
Harris told the AP that a core issue is whether Americans can see what is happening rather than only hearing officials describe it. He said, “We all have had the experience of them telling us things that simply do not square with what we see with our own eyes,” and added that “Journalists being present to witness these things and report them are crucial to our being able to make our minds about what our government is doing.”
Jonathan Manes, senior counsel with the MacArthur Justice Center’s Illinois office, agreed that the journalist-charging aspect is striking. He said: “It’s astonishing that the federal government is criminally charging journalists for covering a protest,” and he added, “The crucial point is that a journalist covering activities going on is not part of those activities.” Manes also said, “None of this is to say that the protest here was a good thing or that it was even allowed,” and argued that “journalists shouldn’t be charged federally with conspiracy when they’re covering it.”
The FACE Act and the Conspiracy Against Rights law carry penalties that can include prison time depending on the specific circumstances described by prosecutors. Harris said a court would have to “sort that out,” underscoring that, while the government’s legal theories may vary in strength as applied to protesters and others, the central dispute also includes whether journalists can be treated as participants based solely on their presence and coverage.
AP reporters Tiffany Stanley and Audrey McAvoy contributed to the story.