Speaker GEORGIA FORT
I wanted to alert the public that
Nicolle Wallace reacts to Don Lemon’s arrest over protest coverage, highlighting DOJ politicization and threats to press freedom.
Key Takeaways
- The arrest of journalists covering protests signals a dangerous precedent for press freedom in the U.S.
- Political appointees in the DOJ are overriding career prosecutors to pursue controversial charges.
- The FACE Act is being repurposed beyond its original intent to criminalize protest activities.
- Internal resistance within the FBI and DOJ indicates significant institutional conflict over these prosecutions.
- The situation reflects broader authoritarian tactics to silence dissent and undermine constitutional rights.
Summary
- Don Lemon and activist Georgia Fort were arrested for covering a protest inside a Minneapolis church after the killing of Renee Nicole Good.
- They face civil rights charges related to conspiracy against freedom of religion and interfering with worship, punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
- Attorney General Pam Bondi directed the arrests, framing them as protecting the right to worship under the Trump administration.
- Career prosecutors in Minnesota and Los Angeles resisted involvement, citing lack of evidence to support charges.
- The FBI acting chief in Minnesota was removed amid internal resistance to the charges and disputes over civil rights investigations.
- The arrests reflect a broader pattern of politicization and hollowing out of career DOJ and FBI staff under Trump.
- The charges rely on the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE Act), originally designed to protect abortion clinic access, now applied to places of worship.
- The situation exemplifies criminalization of protest and suppression of dissent through legal means.
- Journalists and protesters are increasingly targeted, raising concerns about press freedom and constitutional rights.
- The case highlights tensions between political appointees and career officials within the justice system.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker GEORGIA FORT
agents are at my door right now.
Speaker GEORGIA FORT
This is all stemming from the fact that I filmed a protest as a member of the media.
Speaker GEORGIA FORT
It's hard to understand how we have a constant a constitution, constitutional rights when you can just be arrested for being a member of the press.
Speaker GEORGIA FORT
You and we
Speaker GEORGIA FORT
we've seen all these violations.
Speaker GEORGIA FORT
All right, you guys, I got to go. They're knocking.
Speaker UNKNOWN
She's coming.
Speaker UNKNOWN
It's an extraordinary thing to live through, to see in real time happening in your country and and in your profession. It's a line that we as a country cannot uncross.
Speaker UNKNOWN
The Trump administration has arrested two journalists today.
Speaker UNKNOWN
Former CNN anchor Don Lemon and Georgia Fort, whose video you just saw right there.
Speaker UNKNOWN
She goes on to say that her children are impacted by this.
Speaker UNKNOWN
Um,
Speaker UNKNOWN
after they both documented protests that took place inside a church in Minneapolis.
Speaker UNKNOWN
The protest inside the church took place in the immediate aftermath of the killing of Renee Nicole Good.
Speaker UNKNOWN
Protesters interrupted services at a church where an immigration and customs enforcement official serves as a pastor.
Speaker UNKNOWN
And those protesters chanted Ice Out.
Speaker UNKNOWN
Lemon and Fort were there covering it, and they were indicted on two civil rights charges, conspiracy against freedom of religion and interfering with the exercise of freedom of religion at a place of worship.
Speaker UNKNOWN
They face up to 10 years in prison.
Speaker UNKNOWN
Attorney General Pam Bondi announced the arrests of Lemon and Fort along with two other activists in a post on social media this morning, saying the arrest occurred at her direction.
Speaker UNKNOWN
In a video statement, under that, said, quote, under President Trump's leadership in this administration, you have the right to worship freely and safely.
Speaker UNKNOWN
If you violate that sacred right, we are coming after you, end quote.
Speaker UNKNOWN
It comes after lawyers and judges have pushed back against the Justice Department on charging Lemon.
Speaker UNKNOWN
A federal magistrate judge declined to approve a criminal complaint against Don Lemon last week.
Speaker UNKNOWN
And our own Carol Lennig reports that many career prosecutors who are still inside DOJ after the last 15 months are still there.
Speaker UNKNOWN
People inside both the Minnesota and Los Angeles offices who've seen everything else that has happened.
Speaker UNKNOWN
Where Lemon was arrested, that was the Los Angeles office, refused to be involved in charging Don Lemon and others around covering this church protest.
Speaker UNKNOWN
They know the evidence does not back up the charges, which require use of force or threat of it.
Speaker UNKNOWN
Here's some of Don Lemon's own footage from when he was covering the protest.
Speaker UNKNOWN
Take a look.
Speaker LEMON
So the protesters are confronting church members and leaders.
Speaker LEMON
They stopped the service.
Speaker LEMON
A lot of people, a number of people have left.
Speaker LEMON
There's some who are still sitting here.
Speaker UNKNOWN
Justice has happened in your city right now.
Speaker UNKNOWN
Are you okay?
Speaker LEMON
I'm just here for I'm not I'm just here photographing.
Speaker UNKNOWN
Are you okay?
Speaker LEMON
I'm not part of I'm not part of the group.
Speaker LEMON
I'm just here photographing.
Speaker LEMON
I'm a journalist.
Speaker UNKNOWN
I want to bring in to our coverage senior investigative reporter Carol Lennig.
Speaker UNKNOWN
Melissa, John and the Reverend are still here.
Speaker UNKNOWN
Um, Carol, tell us, this is a fast-moving story.
Speaker UNKNOWN
Tell me what you're hearing.
Speaker CAROL LEONNIG
Yeah, today has been fast.
Speaker CAROL LEONNIG
So this morning, pretty much as soon as MS Now and other outlets confirmed that Don Lemon and several other people had been arrested in an alleged conspiracy to threaten people and and block them from attending their church service in St. Paul.
Speaker CAROL LEONNIG
Minutes after that news broke, we were learning from sources that career prosecutors in Minnesota and Los Angeles had resisted, many of them resisted being involved in this case because they do not see how the facts that have been gathered, the evidence that is obviously videotaped and you've shown some of it, Nicole, how any of those facts line up with the charges that have now been brought.
Speaker CAROL LEONNIG
Um,
Speaker CAROL LEONNIG
that reporting is vindicated now by the fact that the people who actually signed the charges here in this case were all political appointees, top-level people in the US Department of Justice, including Harmeet Dylan, Pam Bondi, and some other Dan Rosen, the acting US attorney in Minnesota.
Speaker CAROL LEONNIG
No career individuals signed that document.
Speaker CAROL LEONNIG
The next thing that we're learning, Nicole, and I'll jump to it quickly and because it just broke moments ago, is that we have learned from two sources that the FBI's acting chief in the Minnesota office has been removed from that office.
Speaker CAROL LEONNIG
Um, it is based in Brooklyn Park, a suburb just north, you know, several miles north of the center of Minneapolis.
Speaker CAROL LEONNIG
But it's considered the Minneapolis field office.
Speaker CAROL LEONNIG
And that person is out amid his agents resisting bringing some of these charges and amid their dispute with how the government, the Department of Justice refused to investigate the shooting of Renee Good as a civil rights investigation.
Speaker UNKNOWN
Carol, what do you think happens next?
Speaker UNKNOWN
I mean, the the resistance to the arrest of Don Lemon takes place, as you said, both in the judicial branch and inside and within the executive branch, and it proceeds.
Speaker UNKNOWN
Do you see it heading down a path like the attempts to indict Comey and Tish James, or tell me what what you think happens next?
Speaker CAROL LEONNIG
So there is one, I am going to be a little bit nerdy and say there is one amazing similarity between what's happening with the push to arrest protesters in that and also Don Lemon, a journalist in that church.
Speaker CAROL LEONNIG
And protesters generally, as you see on the screen now, who have resisted and filmed and chanted as ICE agents have been rounding up individuals in the street, surrounding cars, blocking in people of color in what they call a targeted immigration raid.
Speaker CAROL LEONNIG
Um, the similarity is that the career folks who run the FBI and who run the administration of justice in the US attorney's office, those units are being hollowed out, and that is exactly what happened when in Virginia, in the Eastern District of Virginia, when Donald Trump insisted that former FBI Director Jim Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, sort of high on his perceived enemies list, that they be indicted.
Speaker CAROL LEONNIG
And in those offices, people, um, basically resigned in protest or were pressured to depart over and over again.
Speaker CAROL LEONNIG
And now that office is quite, um, I wouldn't say gutted, I would say quite weakened, and the same is happening in Minnesota.
Speaker CAROL LEONNIG
Sources we have on the ground there say that the US attorney's office in Minnesota runs about 80 prosecutors, and now is down since Trump's inauguration and accelerated by these immigration disputes, is down to 40 to 35 now.
Speaker UNKNOWN
Melissa Murray, it is such a dramatic overhaul that it it almost is bizarre to say out loud, but they are criminalizing protest.
Speaker UNKNOWN
And what Carol Lennig is describing is is almost the tail, right?
Speaker UNKNOWN
So the the tail of that is that is that the prosecutors and the investigators who would have to actually make those cases in court in front of judges are the people who have left, leaving it empty and only with the people who are carrying out the criminalization of protest.
Speaker UNKNOWN
It is so, you know, back to the rest point, it's so foundational, um, that it's just extraordinary to to see it happening in real time before our eyes.
Speaker MELISSA MURRAY
It is extraordinary, um, but it's a classic authoritarian tactic to silence descent and to use the legal system to do it.
Speaker MELISSA MURRAY
What's really interesting about the law under which the administration purports to prosecute Don Lemon and these others is that it's a law that was intended to secure access to abortion clinics.
Speaker MELISSA MURRAY
It's the Face Act, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act of 1994 that was signed into law by Bill Clinton after a number of violent episodes outside of abortion clinics throughout the United States.
Speaker MELISSA MURRAY
There is a provision in the law that was passed as part of a compromise to get it through both chambers of Congress that also specifies that it protects a right to worship in houses of worship and prevent the obstruction or interference of worshiping in places of worship.
Speaker MELISSA MURRAY
And that's obviously how this has come to pass to be used against Don Lemon and the other independent journalists.
Speaker MELISSA MURRAY
But it is also worth noting that at the beginning of his administration, Donald Trump actually pardoned a number of anti-abortion protesters who had been convicted under the Face Act and the new Trump DOJ, very soon after taking office, issued a memo saying that they would reserve prosecutions under the Face Act in abortion-related cases to those where there were extraordinary circumstances such as real aggravating factors like the use of violence.
Speaker MELISSA MURRAY
They did not impose the same kinds of hurdles for prosecutions or civil actions for interference with places of worship.
Speaker MELISSA MURRAY
So again, a different standard here for those protesting abortion and those in places of worship exercising their First Amendment rights.
Topics:Don LemonNicolle Wallaceprotest arrestpress freedomTrump administrationDOJ politicizationFACE Actcivil rights chargesMinneapolis protestcriminalization of protest
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