Legally speaking, the federal charges against journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort are complex and unusual, sparking debate among lawyers about the legitimacy of the cases.
But politically speaking, it’s pretty simple. The Trump administration wants to punish perceived opponents and raise the cost of critical news coverage.
“This moment is bigger than two journalists,” a coalition of 40 journalism and free press groups said. “It is about whether the First Amendment has meaning when reporting is inconvenient to those in power.”
Or as Fort herself said in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, “Journalism is on trial.”
Fort said “two dozen agents” showed up at her home with an arrest warrant early Friday morning. A law enforcement source told CNN that more than two dozen agents were involved in Lemon’s arrest as well.
So the twin arrests were partly a show of force by the federal government and an expression of power, given that a magistrate judge rejected the government’s initial attempt to charge Lemon and several others.
The Department of Justice, under pressure from prominent MAGA media influencers to arrest Lemon, then took the case to a grand jury and secured indictments that way. The White House celebrated Lemon’s arrest with a mocking post on X on Friday.
Seth Stern, chief of advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation, said “the charges are absolutely frivolous,” but suggested that a courtroom victory is beside the point.
“The Trump administration, I’m sure, knows the baselessness of the charges, just like the lawsuits that Donald Trump files frivolously against news outlets,” Stern told CNN’s Victor Blackwell.
Trump has “demanded $65 billion in damages from news outlets. The point is not to win,” Stern said. “He doesn’t think he’s actually going to those $65 billion. The point is to intimidate and chill lawful newsgathering. To make journalists think twice.”
Many veteran journalists agreed with that assessment but said they would not be deterred from their work.
Lemon himself said Friday night on his live-streaming show, “Now they’re trying to silence journalists. And I will not be silenced.”
Administration officials say they are protecting the First Amendment rights of the worshippers who were at church on January 18 when anti-ICE protesters disrupted a service.
The indictment alleges that Lemon and Fort were part of a “coordinated takeover-style attack” at Cities Church in St. Paul. Lemon and Fort, however, say they were simply there to report on the protest, not participate.
The indictment relies heavily on Lemon’s own live-streamed coverage as evidence. It points out that Lemon previewed the “operation” in advance and said, “We’re not going to give any, any of the information away.”
Lemon’s up-close-and-personal videos of the protest inside the church — showing some parishioners rushing to leave and even slipping on the ice outside, and others having tense discussions with the protesters — went viral. Many viewers were offended by the conduct of both the protesters and the journalists.
The church disruption soon became a top story for Fox News and other pro-Trump media sources. Commentators sided with the worshippers and villainized Lemon, who has been a prominent Trump foe for years, including during his time as a prime time CNN anchor.
Trump appointees in the Justice Department responded — sometimes personally on X — to MAGA demands for legal action.
The government charged both journalists with conspiring against people exercising their freedom of religion and violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act of 1994, known as the FACE Act. That act was created to protect reproductive health clinics and patients, and it also prohibits the use of force or threats to interfere with churchgoers.
“To our knowledge, it is unprecedented for the Justice Department to deploy the federal laws cited in this case against journalistic activity,” Gabe Rottman, VP of policy at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, told CNN.
“Historically, the limited number of cases that have been brought against a journalist documenting a protest on private property have been handled as trespass cases at the state level,” Rottman said. “Those charges are almost always dropped, or if the cases go to trial, the journalists typically prevail.”
Numerous First Amendment lawyers have similarly predicted that Lemon and Fort will prevail.
Journalists have already been poking holes in the indictment’s dramatic description of the church disruption. For instance, the indictment asserts that Lemon and Fort tried to “oppress and intimidate” the church pastor, while Lemon’s live stream showed him calmly interviewing the pastor.
If the cases ever get to trial, lawyers expect that government prosecutors would have a difficult time proving intent.
“The government has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they had the specific intent to interfere,” Greg Rosen, a former assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted January 6 rioters, said on CNN’s “Laura Coates Live.”
Rosen noted that “individuals who claimed to be journalists” were involved in the January 6 attack.
Prosecutors did not look “to see what outlet they belonged to” or what they believed; rather, “we looked at what they did,” he said. “We looked to whether we can prove their knowledge, their intent, and their actions… That is something that I think is largely lacking here.”
On Friday night, Coates interviewed Nekima Levy Armstrong, who helped lead the church protest, and Armstrong flatly denied that she “coordinated” with Lemon or Fort.
“It was a clandestine operation, which meant no one other than the organizers had any information about where we were even going,” Armstrong said.
Lemon and Fort were given an address for the protest location, but “they had no details… They didn’t know what was going to happen,” she added.
Nevertheless, some Trump-aligned commentators have expressed confidence in the government’s cases. Megyn Kelly, who has a contentious history with Lemon, said Friday on her podcast that Lemon made a “colossal blunder” by going inside the private property of the church.
“If he had stayed on that sidewalk, this would not be happening to him,” Kelly said. “But he didn’t. He joined the mob, he disrupted the service, he got in the face of the pastor and other parishioners, he was told to leave, he refused. He’s in a lot of trouble and it’s not because President Trump doesn’t like Don Lemon.”
Lemon’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, said Lemon will fight the charges vigorously.
A wide array of First Amendment advocates condemned Friday’s arrests as something out of the autocratic playbook.
“Journalism is not a crime. Reporting on protests is not a crime,” Amnesty International said. “Arresting journalists for their reporting is a clear example of an authoritarian practice.”
The New York Times said in a statement that the arrests “continue a clear pattern of ignoring established law and infringing constitutionally protected rights to target reporting the administration finds politically disfavorable.”
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression said Friday that the charges against Lemon “raise serious concerns for press freedom.”
The group recently asserted that the conduct of the anti-ICE protesters at the church was not protected under the First Amendment.
“But that doesn’t mean the federal government’s charges against Lemon — civil rights charges that require evidence he was threatening or physically obstructing congregants or coordinating such activity — are warranted,” FIRE’s director of public advocacy Aaron Terr said.
“Manufacturing federal crimes out of the facts we’ve seen so far chills” the core reporting function of the press, Terr said.
Referencing the White House’s post mocking Lemon’s arrest and the administration’s other actions against news outlets, he said, “That appears to be the point.”
