Don’t hate me but I totally forgot that Don Lemon doesn’t work for CNN anymore. I thought he was still a CNN reporter and anchor, that’s how little I pay attention to CNN’s programming at this point. Lemon was fired from CNN in 2023, and since then, he’s tried his hand at a Twitter talk show (canceled) and I guess he does social-media and YouTube independent-journalism now. Well, Lemon has been in Minneapolis for a few weeks, covering the ICE and Border Patrol occupation of the city, and the federal authorities’ reign of terror, murder and abuse. Lemon and another journalist named Georgia Fort attended a protest within a Minneapolis church, Cities Church. The pastor of the church is David Easterwood, who is ALSO an ICE field director. There have been protests and demonstrations within the church, and Lemon and Fort attended and covered one of those protests. Soon after, they were arrested on bogus charges under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act. Lemon and Fort were released within 24 hours.
Federal agents arrested independent journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort for covering a protest at Cities Church in St. Paul, where a pastor is also an official with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Lemon, a former CNN anchor and NBC correspondent, was arrested Thursday night as he was covering the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, his attorney said in a statement. The arrest comes after a magistrate judge rejected a previous request by prosecutors to charge him.
“Instead of investigating the federal agents who killed two peaceful Minnesota protesters, the Trump Justice Department is devoting its time, attention and resources to this arrest, and that is the real indictment of wrongdoing in this case,” Lemon’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, wrote in a statement.
Fort, an Emmy-award winning Twin Cities journalist, filmed a short Facebook live video around 6:30 a.m. Friday morning announcing that agents were at her door and her lawyer advised her to go with them. The agents said they were able to go before a grand jury and get a warrant for her arrest, Fort said.
“This is all stemming from the fact that I filmed a protest as a member of the media” Fort said. “I don’t feel like I have my First Amendment right as a member of the press.”
Fort’s arrest warrant listed charges of conspiracy against the right of religious freedom and interfering with the exercise of religious freedom at a place of worship. Fort appeared before a federal judge on Friday afternoon and was released after prosecutors unsuccessfully tried to have her held in jail, arguing the offense was violent in nature.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi posted on X that two others were also arrested at her direction in connection with the protest: Black Lives Matter activist Trahern Jeen Crews and Jamael Lydell Lundy, who works as a lobbyist for the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office and is a Democratic-Farmer-Labor candidate for state Senate.
Demonstrators, led by civil rights attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong and St. Paul School Board Member Chauntyll Allen, interrupted the service at Cities Church on Jan. 18 with chants of “Justice for Renee Good,” who was shot and killed by an ICE agent earlier this month. Pastor David Easterwood is an ICE field director in St. Paul, but did not appear to be present at the service during the protest. Fort and Lemon filmed the protest, during which demonstrators sought to point out the contradiction between working for ICE and preaching the Christian Gospel. “How dare you claim to be a pastor of God and you are involved in evil in our community,” Levy Armstrong said in the middle of the church.
Federal agents arrested Levy Armstrong, a former president of Minneapolis NAACP and a reverend herself, on Jan. 22 along with Allen and a third demonstrator. Levy Armstrong was charged under 18 USC 241, felony conspiracy to violate others’ civil rights, according to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who called it a “riot.”
The fact that the federal government went to LA to arrest Don Lemon for attending and covering a protest in a Minneapolis church is shocking. Apparently, Kristi Noem and federal authorities first tried to get a judge to sign off on all of these ridiculous charges but the judge was like “nope.” And Noem and her people just went ahead and arrested them anyway. Noem is such a C-U-Next-Tuesday, my god. She’s so busy lying her Botox off about the American citizens murdered by federal paramilitary Nazi dumbf–ks to actually charge any ICE agent with the horrendous crimes they’re committing, but suddenly she has all the time in the world to manufacture federal charges against Black activists and journalists.
This video was filmed in Georgia Fort’s home when masked agents with DEA markings were surrounding her home to arrest her. The point is to terrorize journalists (specifically Black journalists) for doing their jobs.
Georgia Fort, an independent journalist and vice president of the Minnesota NABJ chapter, was also arrested by federal agents this morning
I was sent this video of agents at her door: pic.twitter.com/41VAPskkL8
— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) January 30, 2026
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
