Four additional people have been arrested in a protest at a St. Paul church, including journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort.
U.S. Attorney Pam Bondi posted on social media that Lemon and Fort, along with St. Paul activist Trahern Crews and Jamael Lundy, are under arrest. Lundy works at the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office as the intergovernmental affairs coordinator and is married to St. Paul City Council Member Anika Bowie.
Georgia Fort (Caroline Yang / Bush Foundation)
Last week, three people were arrested — Twin Cities civil rights attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong, St. Paul School Board member Chauntyll Allen and social media personality William Scott Kelly.
They were charged with disrupting services inside Cities Church on Summit Avenue, near Snelling Avenue, in St. Paul on Jan. 18. The group said they went to the church because the acting field office director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Minnesota serves as a pastor there.
The recent arrests came after a magistrate judge last week rejected prosecutors’ initial bid to charge Lemon.
Independent journalist Fort went live on Facebook Friday morning, saying that agents were at her door.
“They’re saying that they were able to go before a grand jury sometime, I guess, in the last 24 hours” and they had a warrant for her arrest.
The FBI and Homeland Security Investigations carried out the arrests, FBI Director Kash Patel wrote on X Friday morning.
Fort was arrested at her home just after 6 a.m. Friday and taken to the federal Whipple Building, according to BLCK Press, which Fort founded.
“She said in a video, ‘As a member of the press, I filmed the church protest a few weeks ago and now I’m being arrested for that. It’s hard to understand how we have a Constitution, Constitutional rights, when we can just be arrested for being a member of the press,’” BLCK Press posted on social media Friday morning.
Lemon, who was fired from CNN in 2023, has said he has no affiliation to the organization that went into the church and that he was there as a journalist chronicling protesters.
He was arrested by federal agents in Los Angeles, where he had been covering the Grammy Awards, his attorney Abbe Lowell said.
This is a breaking story and will be updated. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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