Don Lemon Is Federally Charged Over a Church Protest. His Defense: Blame Trump.
- 39 people federally charged over the Jan. 18 disruption of a Sunday service at Cities Church in St. Paul, including Lemon, journalist Georgia Fort, and organizer Nekima Levy Armstrong — DOJ indictment, U.S. v. Lemon, et al., D. Minn.
- 3 times the Justice Department was rejected before it finally secured a grand jury indictment — a magistrate-judge probable-cause denial, then a district judge and the 8th Circuit both declining to intervene — Reason, May 28, 2026
- 0 state charges filed against any of the 39 defendants — St. Paul's own city attorney declined to prosecute — Daily Caller, June 4, 2026
- Pending the case's status as of this writing — not-guilty pleas entered, dismissal motions awaiting a ruling, no convictions — PBS NewsHour (AP)
- Aug. 7 the day Lemon's lawyers filed to dismiss the case as ‘vindictive prosecution’ driven by President Trump's personal animus — Washington Examiner, Aug. 7, 2026
Don Lemon spent nearly two decades as a marquee CNN anchor before becoming an independent journalist. On January 30, 2026, federal agents arrested him in Los Angeles — one of 39 people indicted over a protest that disrupted a Sunday service at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, twelve days earlier.
The charges are real, and the case is pending in the District of Minnesota. On August 6 and 7, Lemon’s attorneys — Abbe Lowell and former acting U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson — filed motions arguing the prosecution isn’t really about what happened inside a church. RedState summarized the defense bluntly: he says his own indictment is Trump’s fault.
None of the 39 defendants has been convicted of anything, and all are entitled to the presumption of innocence. What makes this case unusual isn’t only the vindictive-prosecution defense. It’s that the Democratic-run city where the protest actually happened declined to charge anyone — Lemon included — under state law at all, leaving the federal government to carry the entire prosecution alone.
The chain of events starts eleven days earlier. On January 7, 2026, ICE agent Jonathan Ross fatally shot Renée (Nicole Macklin) Good in Minneapolis, touching off protests across the Twin Cities. On January 18, a coalition calling itself “Operation Pull Up” — organized by civil rights attorney and activist Nekima Levy Armstrong — disrupted the Sunday service at Cities Church in St. Paul, alleging ties between the church’s leadership and ICE. Lemon and independent Minnesota journalist Georgia Fort livestreamed the disruption; Lemon’s producer, Michael Beute, was also present.
Thirty-nine people were eventually charged. But the path to indictment was unusually rocky for the Justice Department. On January 20, U.S. Magistrate Judge Douglas Micko declined to find probable cause for arrest warrants against five of the eight people prosecutors brought before him — including Lemon. U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen (Trump administration) pushed the request past the magistrate, first to a district judge, who also declined, then to the 8th Circuit, which likewise declined to intervene. DOJ went to a grand jury instead and secured an indictment anyway on January 30. Agents arrested Lemon in Los Angeles that same day, and Attorney General Pam Bondi (Trump administration) announced the arrests personally.
At my direction, early this morning federal agents arrested Don Lemon, Trahern Jeen Crews, Georgia Fort, and Jamael Lydell Lundy, in connection with the coordinated attack on Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. More details soon.
In prepared remarks, Bondi cast the prosecution as a defense of religious liberty:
“Under President Trump's leadership... you have the right to worship freely and safely. And if you violate that sacred right, we are coming after you.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi (Trump administration), announcing the arrests, Jan. 30, 2026
The department’s posture had already been staked out publicly the day after the protest, before any charges existed, when Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon (Trump administration) posted a warning aimed squarely at the protesters:
A house of worship is not a public forum for your protest! It is a space protected from exactly such acts by federal criminal and civil laws! Nor does the First Amendment protect your pseudo journalism of disrupting a prayer service. You are on notice!
Months later, lawmakers pressed Bondi on whether the underlying conduct was even illegal in the first place:
Lemon’s attorneys filed two motions to dismiss on August 6 and 7. One argues “vindictive prosecution.” The other, per the Minnesota Reformer, challenges the constitutionality of the federal FACE Act as applied to the church-protest charges. Neither motion disputes what happened inside Cities Church, which the video documents. Both argue the Justice Department chose this case, and this defendant, because of who President Trump wanted punished.
The core of the argument: Lemon has been a repeated target of Trump’s public criticism for years, predating this indictment by a wide margin, and DOJ’s own conduct in the case looks less like even-handed law enforcement and more like a department chasing a predetermined result. Lowell put it directly in the August 7 filing:
“The record could not be more clear that Mr. Lemon has been a persistent target of President Trump's ire... the Justice Department acted on the President's animus by filing unprecedented charges against a journalist for doing his job.”
Abbe Lowell, motion to dismiss, Aug. 7, 2026
The department’s own record gives that argument something to work with. In an application for a search warrant, prosecutors falsely claimed that journalist Georgia Fort had “chanted” along with the protesters inside the church — a factual error DOJ later admitted in court filings. In May 2026, a federal judge separately rejected a DOJ warrant application seeking Lemon’s YouTube subscriber data, a request with no obvious connection to proving anyone disrupted a church service.
The administration’s public commentary about Lemon specifically didn’t help the “this isn’t personal” argument. On the morning of his arrest, the official White House account posted:
When life gives you lemons... ⛓️
President Trump made similar points on Truth Social in the weeks after the protest:
Agitators and insurrectionists who disrupted the church service should be thrown in jail, or thrown out of the Country.
Paraphrased commentary · not a verbatim post
Paraphrase of Trump's Truth Social posts on the Cities Church protesters, as reported by TMZ and The Wrap.
Bondi has rejected the vindictive-prosecution framing outright, arguing the case rests on the video evidence alone:
Set the federal case aside for a moment and look at what Minnesota’s own prosecutors did with the same video evidence. In June 2026, City Attorney Irene Kao (D) announced her office would not bring state charges against any of the 39 people who took part in the Cities Church disruption — not Lemon, not Fort, not Armstrong, not one of the other protesters. The decision came under Mayor Melvin Carter (D) — whose city attorney holds sole discretion over municipal charging decisions — leaving the entire prosecutorial weight of the case with the federal government alone.
That is a real gap, not a technicality. Cities Church’s own leadership objected publicly. Lead pastor Jonathan Parnell and associate pastor David Easterwood — who also serves as ICE’s acting St. Paul field director — criticized the decision not to prosecute at the local level, arguing the same video Bondi cites as sufficient for a federal civil-rights case was apparently not sufficient for St. Paul to bring so much as a misdemeanor. A Democratic-run city that will not charge a documented disruption of a worship service, even as it lets the U.S. Justice Department shoulder the entire legal fight alone, has chosen not to enforce its own laws.
All defendants have pleaded not guilty. Lemon and Armstrong entered their pleas on February 13, 2026; Fort followed on February 17. The FACE Act challenge and the vindictive-prosecution motion are both pending before the district court as of this writing, with no ruling date set. If the FACE Act challenge succeeds, its reach could extend well beyond this single case, to how federal prosecutors can charge disruptions of religious services nationwide.
For now, the case sits exactly where federal criminal cases sit before a verdict: allegations, not findings. Every defendant — Lemon, Fort, Beute, and Armstrong included — is presumed innocent unless and until a jury says otherwise. What is already established, regardless of how the merits shake out, is that a U.S. magistrate found the government’s own evidence too thin to justify an arrest warrant, and that the city where the protest actually happened declined to prosecute anyone at all.
Don Lemon and 38 co-defendants are federally charged over the January 18 disruption of a Sunday service at Cities Church in St. Paul — a case the Justice Department pursued only after a magistrate judge, a district judge, and the 8th Circuit all declined to find probable cause for arrest warrants, before DOJ secured a grand jury indictment anyway. Lemon’s August 6-7 motions to dismiss argue the prosecution is vindictive, driven by Trump’s personal animus toward him — a claim bolstered by DOJ’s own admitted false claim that journalist Georgia Fort “chanted” with protesters, and by a rejected warrant for Lemon’s YouTube subscriber data. Meanwhile, City Attorney Irene Kao, serving under Mayor Melvin Carter (D), declined to bring a single state charge against any of the 39 people involved. The case is pending, no one has been convicted, and every defendant is presumed innocent — but the city where it all happened chose not to enforce its own laws at all.
