If the Cities Church case falls apart, it will not be the first such embarrassment for Trump’s Justice Department.
One year in, the Trump administration has amassed a startling record of hostility toward open public discourse—including barring journalists from the White House press pool, evicting any less-than-sycophantic reporters from the Pentagon, and, just this month, sending the FBI to search the home of a reporter. Today, it crossed a new line. It arrested two journalists: Don Lemon, the former CNN news personality, and Georgia Fort, a freelance reporter based in Minnesota.
Along with seven others, Lemon and Fort have been charged with conspiring to violate the civil rights of parishioners at a St. Paul church, along with violating a prohibition on blocking access to a house of worship. On the basis of the record available so far, the case against them appears factually weak, legally shoddy, and marred by a baffling series of procedural irregularities that raise serious questions about the Justice Department’s ability to win in court. This prosecution is best understood not as law enforcement but as propaganda, junk intended purely to get attention. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t dangerous.
The charges against the two journalists trace back to January 18. That Sunday, a group of Minnesota activists organized a demonstration interrupting services at a Southern Baptist church whose pastor reportedly works as the acting director of an ICE field office. Lemon interviewed activists before the protests, livestreaming news coverage on his YouTube channel, and both he and Fort filmed the protest from inside Cities Church. Again and again during the livestream, Lemon explained that he was there as a reporter, not an activist. Similarly, in an Instagram post after the protest, Georgia Fort emphasized, “My job as a journalist is to document what’s happening.”
Videos of demonstrators chanting “ICE out” during a church service sparked outrage on the right. “Demonic and godless behavior,” Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, posted on X. In another post, she stated that DOJ would “pursue federal charges.” When Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that she had spoken with Cities Church’s leadership, a flood of X comments demanded that DOJ immediately arrest the demonstrators. Lemon, who had tangled with Donald Trump while at CNN, received particular ire.
Bondi’s and Dhillon’s eagerness to weigh in on a potential prosecution is unusual. Prior to this administration, the Justice Department didn’t typically forecast its plans, much less do so on social media.
