A magistrate judge in Minnesota rejected federal prosecutors’ attempt to bring charges against journalist Don Lemon after he followed protesters into a St. Paul-area church during services, according to two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss court proceedings that have not been made public.
A rejection of a criminal complaint is an extremely rare occurrence in the criminal justice system.
Lemon had followed protesters into a St. Paul-area church over the weekend, and top Justice Department officials have said on social media that they want to charge him and other protesters with a crime. The protests at Cities Church in St. Paul, which interrupted religious services on Sunday, drew widespread condemnation from online right-wing influencers and has become a flash point in the debateover the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
On Thursday, Justice Department officials announced that they had arrested three activists in Minnesota accused of playing a role in organizing the protest.
To indict someone on a felony, federal prosecutors must present their case to grand jurors, who vote to charge someone if they believe there was probable cause that a crime was committed. Prosecutors must bring less serious misdemeanor charges to a magistrate judge. Judges would reject such a charge if they do not believe there is probable cause that a crime was committed.
Prosecutors can also present felony cases to a magistrate judge to approve — and then would have 30 days from the time of an arrest to go before a grand jury to indict the suspect.
Attorney General Pam Bondi announced the arrests of Nekima Levy Armstrong, a civil rights attorney; Chauntyll Louisa Allen, a member of St. Paul’s school board; and William Kelly, in a series of social media posts. Bondi did not say what charges they are facing, and, as of Thursday morning, there were no publicly available court documents detailing accusations.
“Our nation was settled and founded by people fleeing religious persecution,” Bondi wrote. “Religious freedom is the bedrock of this country. We will protect our pastors. We will protect our churches. We will protect Americans of faith.”
FBI Director Kash Patel said on social media that Levy Armstrong has been charged with violating the Face Act, a law typically used to protect access to abortion clinics but one the Trump administration has deployed to target demonstrators at protests at houses of worship.
It was not immediately clear Thursday whether Levy Armstrong, Allen or Kelly had retained attorneys.
Supporters of the activists said they were gathering outside the federal courthouse. They released a statement condemning the arrests.
“This is about justice. This is about democracy. This is about freedom,” the statement said. “We will not stay silent while activists are targeted for standing up for their communities.”
The arrests occur amid rising tensions involving the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts in Minnesota. For weeks, demonstrators have protested the presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in the state — a situation exacerbated by the Jan. 7 fatal shooting of Renée Good by an ICE officer.
Justice Department officials have refused calls to examine the shooting, saying no basis exists to criminally investigate whether the officer used excessive force. Instead, they have pushed for an investigation into Good’s partner, who was protesting ICE officers at the time of the shooting, and subpoenaed state and local officials as part of a criminal probe alleging their rhetoric has interfered with ICE’s operations.
Sunday’s church protest, which interrupted services at Cities Church in St. Paul, has drawn widespread condemnation from online right-wing influencers and vows from top Justice Department officials that demonstrators will be prosecuted.
Video posted to social media showed dozens of protesters at a Sunday morning service, many chanting “ICE out” and “Justice for Renée Good.” Activists said they targeted the church because they believed David Easterwood, the acting field director of the city’s ICE field office, served as a pastor there. Easterwood was not at the church at the time.
The crowd left shortly after the roughly 25-minute demonstration and was outside the building by the time St. Paul police arrived in response to multiple calls about a disturbance.
In an interview Monday with The Washington Post, Levy Armstrong described the protest as nonviolent, lawful and morally necessary. She said protesters entered the church, sang and prayed with the congregation until Jonathan Parnell, the lead pastor, finished his prayer.
Levy Armstrong stood to ask Parnell about Easterwood and his role with ICE. She said Parnell refused to engage with her questions and instead turned up the music to drown out the chants of protesters.
Parnell told Lemon in an interview during the protest that it was “shameful” of the protesters to interrupt a public gathering of worshiping Christians.
“Our church had gathered for worship, which we do every Sunday. We asked them to leave, and they obviously have not left,” Parnell said.
Outrage quickly erupted online, and, within hours, top Trump administration officials responded, labeling the demonstration an attempt at “intimidation and harassment of Christians.”
Bondi said that same day the department had opened a Face Act investigation into the incident.
Lemon, a former CNN anchor, drew the brunt of the criticism from the right, with influencers demanding he face charges.
Lemon, who works as an independent journalist, spent several hours interviewing protesters and upset congregants in a live stream of the demonstration on his YouTube channel.
“We were chronicling the protests,” Lemon said in an Instagram post Monday. “Once the protest started in the church, we did an act of journalism, which was report on it, talk to the people who are involved, which included the pastor, members of the church and members of the organization. That’s it. It’s called journalism.”
Passed in 1994, the Face Act has primarily been known for protecting access to reproductive health clinics by making it a crime for demonstrators to block entrances, damage property or threaten patients.
During the Biden administration, Republicans accused the Justice Department of wielding the act as a cudgel to punish antiabortion demonstrators for exercising their First Amendment rights.
Since President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, the department has cut back on Face Act prosecutions and deployed the law instead to target protests staged outside houses of worship.
Those cases are based on a little-known provision of the statute that also criminalizes attempts to injure or intimidate people seeking to exercise their protected right to religious freedom.
Molly Hennessy-Fiske and Kim Bellware contributed to this report.
The post Judge in Minnesota rejected federal attempt to charge journalist Don Lemon appeared first on Washington Post.
