Former CNN journalist Don Lemon arrested after church protest in Minnesota
reuters.comI don't know the details but it looks like one side says obstruction, which is something physical, the other side says freedom of speech, which is non-physical act.
If there is video evidence it should be easy to decide for the court.
You missed that a judge denied the arrest warrant for Don (while approving some others) citing insufficient evidence. Govt appealed, appeals court denied again. They arrest him anyways.
No, A grand jury indicted him. Nothing untoward here. It’s how these things work.
You're right, there was a grand jury. Thanks for the correction. I hadn't seen the unsealed indictment.
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/30/don-lemon-appears-i...
I see, I found a video about it, actually it was not a protest, I thought people were outside the church, but they went inside.
https://youtu.be/s7jsQKRoNEY?si=gmHgnnxBrbgXR525
It was clearly not a protest but obstruction by others. And he was not taking part of the obstruction, just documenting it.
I can understand DOJ charging him with conspiracy if he took part of the planning, but arrasting him was probably not needed (whether conspiracy took part or not), as he didn't seem to disrupt the church.
FACE covers "physical" obstruction or threats of violence or force. Standing in the room and yelling is not physical obstruction, and none of what was yelled was threatening violence. Regardless, Don Lemon himself didn't take part in any of that - he just went there to film it.
The DOJ just wants to scare people out of protesting or reporting on crimes, score some points with their religious base, and "own the libs" by turning the FACE act around, probably in retaliation for the (IMO overcharging) of the "Pro Life Grandmother" aka Paula “Paulette” Harlow:
>“[The defendants] forcefully entered the clinic and set about blockading two clinic doors using their bodies, furniture, chains, and ropes,” the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia said.
> I can understand DOJ charging him with conspiracy if he took part of the planning
The story includes a link to the entire livestream. You may be interested in the interview with protest coordinators before they enter the church.
I remember seeing an edited video on the order of 5 minutes long on Don Lemon's own channel that seems to be gone now, although the livestream is still there.
I lean more toward DOJ here. He knew in advance, showed up, and went inside. That’s participation. Not standing outside or peering through the door, but occupying the building. Having a camera doesn’t make that journalism. There’s no freedom of speech to defend here
That's still no more than a state-level misdemeanor trespass. The federal charges are insane.
> If there is video evidence it should be easy to decide for the court.
How charmingly naive: the courts will follow the law in deciding.
>easy to decide for the court.
This is the kind of crap minorities always have to put up with in the US. Cops can arrest you for things that are absolutely against the law and have you prove your innocence. It doesn't matter what the court thinks at Trump will field a huge range of lawyers to ensure the process is as painful as possible. His idea of justice is if you piss off the king he should have the right to behead you.
This is a slow slide into authoritarianism. When journalists get arrested for documenting important events, it sets a dangerous precedent. Resist and Unsubscribe[0]
[0]: https://www.scottrlarson.com/blog/blog-resist-unsubscribe/
It looks like this has become the biggest thread for it, though.
The church protest was cringe and garbage. I don't know what those people thought they were doing, but they basically turned even more people against them.
This whole ICE thing is a psychological operation. It's media manipulation and all the people violently protesting are useful idiots falling for it, or they're feds in disguise instigating more violence to turn around and give more crackdowns.
Don Lemon is one of the chosen media elites. He can sexually assault people and nothing happens. He's a terrible human being, but nothing will come from this. It's all smoke and mirror.
Go outside and turn off your phones people.
It's amazing you'd claim the government is orchestrating both sides of this to gain power and end it with "but please just stop paying attention".
A Christian pastor is someone within ICE. Think about that. Then think about what Christ espoused and then try to reconcile those two chasms. To protest such irony and hypocrisy is the most American thing ever. If they had a gofundme for their legal fees I’d happily oblige.
Whenever you point out the hypocricy of so-called MAGA Christians on this site, you get downvoted. Never any replies with a counterargument.
I have to imagine it's people with a Christian identity who sense on some base level that this is all deeply wrong, but can't reconcile their politics with the actual tenants of their faith. So they just fume and try to hide the uncomfortable truth from view. (I say this as a Christian who is utterly aghast at the state of the country. At least the Catholic leadership has the right idea.)
> Whenever you point out the hypocricy of so-called MAGA Christians on this site, you get downvoted
And flagged, yes. Because it's completely inappropriate to the discussion, which was already off topic. It's simply bashing a political outgroup without insight, which violates HN guidelines in multiple ways. It does not merit a counterargument.
A political outgroup? You mean the dominant party in all Chambers of government? Without insight? That’s too funny. ICE and CBP is murdering people left and right and the presidents goons are cosplaying Nazis and you’re mad we aren’t having a cogent high brow conversation?
The outgroup of the speaker. Nothing about the term "outgroup" says anything about popularity.
If you actually believed the world were as you describe it, you would not be sitting behind your computer on HN in the first place.
I agree with their sentiment even if it wasn't phrased particularly well.
While "outgroup" can technically just mean anyone the speaker doesn't identify with, applying it to the party in power creates a false equivalence. It frames the criticism as mere tribalism or bullying, rather than a legitimate response to the actions of those currently in power.
It’s hard to get behind the classification of the most powerful political movement in the country as a marginalized or "othered" group in this, or any context, really.
> If you actually believed the world were as you describe it, you would not be sitting behind your computer on HN in the first place.
What a ridiculous ad hominem. Perhaps they're hundreds of miles away from any of the cities being terrorized by ICE and otherwise have their own life to live.
It’s true. I’ve seen it too. Seems HN and silicon alley money and tech aligned folks are pearl clutching their money and have made a deal wit the devil (Trump and MAGA). It’s fascinating and sad.
LOL. You can say that about the whole country that claims to be god’s nation and espouse Christian valaues, while doing the exact opposite most of the time.
Mass immigration didn’t exist back then and all the similar situations in the Bible are in a negative light or genocidal.
What would the main guy in the book say tho?
I believe that in Acts, His followers were told to “go out into all nations”, not “invite all nations back here to Roman Judea, the Romans will be totally cool with that!”.
It’s quite the leap from telling individuals to be hospitable to travelers to supporting mass immigration as a national policy.
No, it's not a leap it's a core prescription of Christian practice. The Parable of the Good Samaritan illustrates this. You are to treat your neighbours well, and your neighbours are anyone in need of your mercy.
Does that include letting them live in our country illegally while they live off of welfare payments?
Probably, yeah. Jesus was a radical and the USA is rich. But with that being said, I'm not the one advocating for a Christian nation.
Oh, is that all he said about how you should treat others? You're right, he'd probably advocate for strong territorial integrity and not at all be concerned with poverty and hunger. Jesus was the first libertarian after all.
Lmao
Isn't the samaritain story ultimately just about that?
Pedantic backstory info: Samaritan with a capital "S", because it was an ethnic group of people (IIRC, an unpopular splinter sect of Judaism).
Still the man they claim to follow welcomed the outsider. And some sects don’t even care or consider much of the Old Testament as much as they emphasize the New.
> Mass immigration didn’t exist back then
What? No.
>This whole ICE thing is a psychological operation. It's media manipulation and all the people violently protesting are useful idiots falling for it, or they're feds in disguise instigating more violence to turn around and give more crackdowns.
No, it's real. The media didn't make it up, the people in the streets aren't crisis actors. Sometimes things actually happen. Sometimes what the media reports on is actually real.
Maybe what you are saying is true. But even then, personally, I find it disturbing that the Trump administration recently raided a Washington Post journalist and now they are arresting journalists. When I look at these events alongside Trump always attacking news outlets and how aggressively abusive the press secretaries are in their interaction with reporters, I see a big pattern of undermining the press.
To me this arrest looks like lawfare. It looks like the administration abusing its power to violate the first amendment.
> Lemon livestreamed a demonstration earlier this month that interrupted a church service in St. Paul, Minnesota, protesting President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown in the area. He said he was at the demonstration to cover it as a journalist.
> In an unusual move that drew a rebuke from the chief federal judge in Minnesota, Patrick Schiltz, the Justice Department filed emergency applications to get Schiltz and then the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals to overrule the magistrate judge. Schiltz told prosecutors that if they disagreed with a magistrate judge's decision, they must instead seek an indictment from a grand jury in order to arrest Lemon.
> In a letter filed in court records, Schiltz wrote that Lemon and his producer "were not protestors at all."
> "There is no evidence that those two engaged in any criminal behavior or conspired to do so," the chief judge wrote.
> In the livestream archived on his YouTube channel, Lemon can be seen meeting with and interviewing the activists before they go to the church, and later chronicling the disruption inside, interviewing congregants, protesters and a pastor, who asks Lemon and the protesters to leave.
Popular comments on the video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4ctuhv-cck) from within the first couple of days after upload make problems with the pro-Lemon narrative quite clear.
Not mentioned is that the interview with the activists discloses a clear plan to "make the [congregation] feel uncomfortable", and that Lemon's interviews were quite hostile and aimed at furthering the protesters' point of view. At one point he could be seen to lean on an interviewee while saying "don't touch me". The protesters did not leave when asked.
Everyone who watches the footage is encouraged to consider how they would perceive the actions if this had taken place at a mosque or synagogue rather than a church. It's curious that Reuters could apparently find several "Free press advocates [who] voiced alarm over the arrests", but not any freedom of speech advocates concerned with the congregation's right to freedom of association on private property.
It's also strange that the article goes into extensive detail about Lemon's background and similar actions by the Trump administration, but is silent about the apparent motivation for the choice of venue for the protest (the lead pastor, Jonathan Parnell, was suspected of having ties to ICE) which makes the action seem rather like harassment.
(It was David Easterwood they were after. I misread some other coverage.)
None of this seems relevant to Lemon being charged with any crimes. Do you know something others don't which would justify ICE acting against what the judge said?
> "There is no evidence that those two engaged in any criminal behavior or conspired to do so," the chief judge wrote.
The judge is factually incorrect, per Lemon's own livestream recording. ICE is not involved in getting the warrant nor making the arrest, and will presumably not be involved in the trial. The purpose of the activists, and the strength of Lemon's connection to them, is obviously relevant to the charges, as the charges specifically allege the thing that the judge wrongly asserts to lack evidence.
> The judge is factually incorrect, per Lemon's own livestream recording.
Claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. Pointing to a video is not providing evidence. However, I'm more than willing to watch a timestamped link and read an explanation of the evidence in your words (perhaps several, if required; I just don't want to spend a lot of time refuting this).
Occam's Razor suggests (really, screams at the top of its lungs) this is further political retaliation from an administration which is now infamous for its acts of political retaliation (among other things). Why would they be telling the truth this time? Further than that, why should any of this administration's evidence be trusted after the AI manipulation stunt? (Dismissing false evidence as a joke meme is not justification.)
Chilling journalists and late night comedians is the MO of the administration.