Prosecuting Journalists for Protest Coverage: Historical Precedents
Federal prosecutors indicted two journalists for covering a protest. Don Lemon, the former CNN anchor, was taken into custody at a Beverly Hills hotel while covering the Grammy Awards. Georgia Fort, an Emmy-winning independent journalist, was arrested at her Minnesota home. Their alleged crime? Documenting an anti-ICE demonstration at a St. Paul church.
When reporters face charges related to protest coverage, it’s usually at the state level—trespassing, unlawful assembly, charges that almost always get dropped. Federal prosecution under specialized civil rights laws? That’s new territory.
A federal judge named Douglas Micko (magistrate judges handle preliminary matters) reviewed the evidence and rejected arrest warrants for Lemon and Fort, saying there wasn’t enough evidence they’d committed a crime. Prosecutors appealed to a higher federal court, which also declined to intervene. Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz wrote directly to the appeals court stating there was “no evidence that those two engaged in any criminal behavior” or conspiracy.
The Justice Department responded by taking the case to a grand jury—skipping the judge entirely—and securing an indictment anyway.
The January 18 Protest
Protesters disrupted a Sunday service at Cities Church in St. Paul on January 18, 2025. They were there because of Renée Nicole Good’s death eleven days earlier. Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis resident, had been shot by ICE agent Jonathan Ross during a traffic stop near an elementary school. Video showed her car moving, but activists argued she posed minimal threat when Ross fired.
The protesters had a specific target: Pastor David Easterwood, who simultaneously served as acting field director of the St. Paul ICE field office. To activists, this dual role—Christian minister and immigration enforcement official—represented an intolerable contradiction.
Several dozen demonstrators gathered at a grocery store parking lot that morning, received instructions, then entered the church during services. They chanted “ICE out” and “Justice for Renee Good,” occupying the main aisle and surrounding the pastor. Church officials later said protesters “accosted members of our congregation, frightened children” and blocked parents from reaching the childcare area. One congregant reported an injury.
Don Lemon arrived as a journalist, not a participant. He livestreamed the event to his social media channels, conducting interviews with both protesters and church members. In his footage, he stated: “We’re not part of the activists, but we’re here reporting on them.”
Georgia Fort was there in the same capacity—documenting a newsworthy event. Both were identifiable as press.
Lemon stayed about 45 minutes, speaking with four parishioners and five protesters. The Washington Post noted that “in all but one instance, the exchanges appear to be calm.” The footage doesn’t show Lemon joining the chants. When a pastor asked him to leave, he complied within seven minutes.
No one was arrested at the scene. The demonstration ended without property damage or violence.
How Prosecutors Built Their Case
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon posted on X that the DOJ was investigating “potential violations of the federal FACE Act” by people “interfering with Christian worshippers.” The framing was immediate: this was about religious freedom, not immigration policy or press freedom.
Four days after the January 18 demonstration, prosecutors sought arrest warrants from Judge Micko. They wanted eight people, including Lemon and Fort. Judge Micko approved warrants for only three—the organizers. He found insufficient evidence for the two journalists.
A federal judge looked at the evidence and concluded that whatever the protesters did, the conduct of the two reporters was fundamentally different.
Prosecutors filed an emergency request with a higher court, asking higher court judges to force reconsideration. The three-judge panel rejected the petition—the government hadn’t tried other legal options first. Judge L. Steven Grasz wrote in a separate opinion agreeing with the decision that while the affidavit might establish probable cause, prosecutors failed to show why the higher court should get involved in an unusual way.
Then came Chief Judge Schiltz’s letter to the appeals court. He stated directly that two of the five people prosecutors wanted arrested “were not protestors at all; instead, they were a journalist and his producer.”
Two judges, two rejections. So prosecutors convened a grand jury.
The grand jury process is famously one-sided. Defense attorneys can’t participate. Judges don’t review the evidence. The prosecutor presents whatever they choose, and grand juries almost always indict. As the saying goes, a prosecutor could indict a ham sandwich.
On January 29, the indictment was unsealed. Nine people faced two charges: conspiracy against rights (a federal law from the 1800s that makes it a crime to conspire to violate someone’s constitutional rights) and violation of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (a law protecting access to abortion clinics and places of worship). Lemon and Fort were charged alongside seven organizers, including Nekima Levy Armstrong, former president of the Minneapolis NAACP chapter, and Chauntyll Louisa Allen, a St. Paul School Board member and Black Lives Matter co-founder.
The indictment alleged that defendants conspired to “injure, oppress, threaten, and intimidate” clergy and congregants, depriving them of their constitutional right to free exercise of religion. It claimed Lemon “largely surrounded” the pastor “in an attempt to oppress and intimidate him” and “physically obstructed” congregants trying to leave.
The evidence? Lemon’s own video of the incident. Prosecutors pointed to footage showing him at the grocery store parking lot before the demonstration, filming as organizers gave instructions. They argued this proved he was part of the conspiracy, not covering it.
The FACE Act and Conspiracy Law
The FACE Act was passed in 1994 to protect access to abortion clinics after a wave of blockades and violence. It makes it a federal crime to use force, threats, or physical obstruction to interfere with someone obtaining or providing reproductive health services—or exercising religious freedom at a place of worship.
The FACE Act protects First Amendment activity. The law includes language stating that nothing in the act should be construed to prohibit expressive conduct protected by the Constitution. Legal experts note this creates a high bar for prosecuting anyone engaged in speech or press activities.
Applying it to reporters documenting events is without precedent, according to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. To convict under the FACE Act, prosecutors must prove Lemon and Fort used force, threats, or physical obstruction—not that they were present, not that they filmed, but that they personally engaged in the prohibited conduct.
The conspiracy charge comes from Section 241 of the U.S. criminal code, dating to Reconstruction. Congress passed it to prosecute Ku Klux Klan members who conspired to deprive freed slaves of their civil rights, particularly voting rights. It’s been used against white supremacist violence, police brutality, and hate crimes.
Using it against reporters covering a demonstration represents a novel application. The law requires prosecutors to prove defendants conspired to deprive someone of a constitutional right and that they had specific intent to do so.
According to CBS News, federal prosecutors in Minneapolis had “significant concerns with the strength of the evidence.” Some career DOJ attorneys reportedly declined to participate, believing the case couldn’t survive First Amendment scrutiny.
They were overruled.
Historical Context
In 1971, the Nixon administration went to court to prevent the New York Times and Washington Post from publishing the Pentagon Papers—classified documents revealing the government had systematically lied about the Vietnam War.
The Supreme Court ruled for the newspapers. Justice Hugo Black wrote in his separate opinion agreeing with the decision that “the press was to serve the governed, not the governors.” The decision established that the government bears an extraordinarily heavy burden when trying to prevent publication—a “heavy presumption against” such restraints.
The Pentagon Papers case was about publication, not newsgathering. But the principle applies: the Constitution protects the ability of reporters to investigate and report on government action, even when officials claim the information is sensitive.
During the Civil Rights era, southern authorities occasionally arrested northern reporters covering demonstrations. They’d charge them with trespass or unlawful assembly—the same charges brought against all participants, not singling out reporters for charges while not charging others. When these cases went to trial, courts generally declined to convict those who were documenting events rather than participating in unlawful conduct.
In 1968, federal prosecutors charged organizers of demonstrations at the Democratic National Convention with conspiracy to incite riots. The trial became a symbol of prosecutorial overreach, with prominent Americans arguing the government was equating organized political protest with organized violence.
The defendants were convicted, but a federal appeals court overturned the convictions. The case became a cautionary tale about using conspiracy laws to prosecute political organizing.
More recently, prosecutors have deployed conspiracy charges against environmental activists and animal rights advocates. The “Green Scare” prosecutions of the 2000s used broad conspiracy theories to reach activists whose direct involvement in property destruction was minimal or nonexistent.
The Lemon-Fort prosecution follows this pattern—using conspiracy laws to reach beyond core conduct (disrupting a service) to encompass people whose presence and documentation occurred alongside the disruption.
Even in the Assange case—where the Trump administration indicted the WikiLeaks founder under the Espionage Act—the government’s theory involved alleged collaboration with a source who unlawfully disclosed information. The Lemon-Fort case doesn’t involve leaked documents or confidential sources. It involves prosecution for the basic act of documenting a public event.
Press freedom organizations note this is common in authoritarian regimes. Turkey, Russia, and Hong Kong use laws protecting public order or national security to prosecute reporters covering demonstrations. Scholars of democratic decline identify criminalization of protest coverage as an early indicator of broader institutional erosion.
The Reporters Committee points out that when reporters face charges related to protest coverage in the U.S., those charges are “almost always dropped, or if the cases go to trial, the journalists typically prevail.” The escalation to federal charges under specialized civil rights laws represents a departure from this pattern.
The Arrests
FBI agents arrested Lemon around 11 p.m. on January 30 at a Beverly Hills hotel. He was in Los Angeles covering the Grammy Awards—roughly 2,000 miles from Minnesota. The choice to arrest him there rather than allowing him to surrender, and the timing during his coverage of a major event, amplified the public spectacle.
Georgia Fort was arrested the next morning at her Minnesota home. She posted a video to Facebook as agents arrived: “We are supposed to have our constitutional right of the freedom to film, to be a member of the press. I don’t feel like I have my First Amendment right as a member of the press.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi personally announced the arrests on social media. In a video, she declared: “Make no mistake. Under President Trump’s leadership and this administration, you have the right to worship freely and safely. And if I haven’t been clear already, if you violate that sacred right, we are coming after you.”
The White House’s official X account posted an image of Lemon with the caption “When life gives you lemons…” accompanied by an emoji depicting chains.
Both were released without having to pay bail.
The response from journalism organizations was swift and unified. The Committee to Protect Journalists called the charges “egregious” and noted that applying these laws to the press was without precedent. The Freedom of the Press Foundation called the arrests “naked attacks on freedom of the press” and “clear warning shots aimed at other journalists.”
The National Association of Black Journalists issued a joint statement: “The First Amendment is not optional and journalism is NOT a crime.” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who knows Lemon personally, called the arrest “an egregious assault on constitutionally protected First Amendment rights.”
Even CNN, which had parted ways with Lemon in 2023, stated the arrest “raises profoundly concerning questions about press freedom and the First Amendment.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer spoke from the Senate floor: “This is a dark message to journalists everywhere: If you dare criticize this administration, watch your back. That is not democracy. That is a police state.”
Impact on Press Freedom
The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker documented assaults on reporters covering Minneapolis ICE operations, with federal officers using force against them. Associated Press reporters were told to move away from ICE activity or face arrest.
News organizations now face calculations about covering immigration enforcement. Send reporters to document ICE operations? Cover anti-ICE demonstrations? The risk calculus has changed.
Independent reporters face even starker choices. Georgia Fort is an Emmy-winning reporter with seventeen years of experience in local television and radio. She was doing her job. Now she’s a federal defendant facing potential prison time.
That sends a message to every freelancer, every independent reporter, every documentary filmmaker: cover activism at your own risk.
The case also reveals how prosecutors can circumvent judicial oversight. Two judges said no probable cause. Prosecutors went to a grand jury and got an indictment anyway. That procedural end-run creates a pathway for future cases that might not survive initial judicial scrutiny.
What Could Happen Next
Lemon’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, has characterized the prosecution as “an unprecedented attack on the First Amendment” and a transparent attempt to distract from the administration’s crises. Georgia Fort’s attorney, Leita Walker, argues Fort was “present at the demonstration solely in a journalistic capacity” and that her arrest is “a transparent and unconstitutional attempt by our federal government to intimidate journalists.”
The defense will likely file motions to dismiss on First Amendment grounds. They’ll argue that prosecuting reporters for documenting events violates press freedom, that the charges are selectively enforced (why these two and not others who covered the demonstration?), and that applying the FACE Act to the press exceeds the law’s scope.
The evidence-sharing process will be critical. Defense attorneys will seek all communications about the decision to prosecute, internal DOJ debates about the case, and any statements by officials describing their intent. If evidence shows prosecutors targeted them for political reasons—retaliation for critical coverage—that could support a retaliation claim.
The case could take 12 to 24 months to resolve if it goes to trial. But given the constitutional questions and the judicial skepticism already expressed, review by a higher court might come sooner.
Whether other reporters face similar charges depends partly on this case’s trajectory. If the defense achieves early success or public pressure mounts, prosecutors might hesitate. If they proceed successfully, other U.S. Attorneys’ offices might develop similar prosecutions.
Press freedom exists to enable reporters to check government power. When the government responds to critical coverage by prosecuting them, that’s not law enforcement—it’s intimidation.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression notes that the case raises serious concerns precisely because it targets the core function of the press: bearing witness to newsworthy events and documenting them for the public.
Don Lemon spent thirty years as a reporter. Georgia Fort spent seventeen years in local news. They were doing what reporters do—showing up, asking questions, recording what they saw.
Now they’re federal defendants.
This article analyzes protest and activism tactics for educational purposes. We aim to contribute to effective and ethical efforts across the political spectrum, and we present diverse viewpoints and ideas without endorsement.