Bondi: Don Lemon arrested in ‘coordinated attack’ on Minnesota church

by WorldTribune Staff / 247 Real News January 30, 2026

Don Lemon has been arrested in connection with the incident in which a group of agitators stormed a Minnesota church and disrupted a Sunday service, Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Friday.

In a post to X, Bondi wrote: “At my direction, early this morning federal agents arrested Don Lemon, Trahern Jeen Crews, Georgia Fort, and Jamael Lydell Lundy, in connection with the coordinated attack on Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota.”

Lemon was apprehended in Los Angeles while covering the Grammy Awards, according to his attorney, Abbe Lowell.

CBS News cited a source as saying a grand jury was empaneled Thursday. The FBI and Homeland Security Investigations, a law enforcement agency within the Department of Homeland Security, were involved in the arrest, sources told CBS.

The CBS report cited a source briefed on the investigation as saying Lemon faces charges of conspiracy to deprive others of their civil rights and violation of the FACE Act by allegedly interfering with the exercise of others’ First Amendment rights.

The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act of 1994 (FACE Act) in part prohibits the use or “threat of force and physical obstruction that injures, intimidates, or interferes with a person seeking … or to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship.”

Earlier this month, Lemon livestreamed leftist agitators who stormed Cities Church reportedly under the suspicion that its pastor had collaborated with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Lemon told viewers that “the freedom to protest” is what the First Amendment is all about. First Amendment protections for free speech and assembly do not extend to disrupting religious services on private property. Cities Church in St. Paul (located in the historic St. Paul’s On the Hill building) is legally considered private property, even when open for public services.

“Don has been a journalist for 30 years, and his constitutionally protected work in Minneapolis was no different than what he has always done,” Lowell said in a statement. “The First Amendment exists to protect journalists whose role it is to shine light on the truth and hold those in power accountable. There is no more important time for people like Don to be doing this work.”

Harmeet Dhillon, the Justice Department’s assistant attorney general for civil rights, previously suggested Lemon could face significant consequences for allegedly partaking in the storming of the church.

Dhillon said Lemon had a presumption of innocence, but his role as a journalist wasn’t necessarily a “shield” for him being a potential party to a crime.

“Don Lemon himself has come out and said he knew exactly what was going to happen inside that facility. He went into the facility, and then he began ‘committing journalism,’ as if that’s sort of a shield from being a part, an embedded part of a criminal conspiracy,” Dhillon said in an interview with Benny Johnson.

“It isn’t and so we’re getting our ducks in a row, putting the facts together, and this is a very serious matter,” she continued. “Come next Sunday, nobody should think in the United States that they’re going to be able to get away with this. Everyone in the protest community needs to know that the fullest force of the federal government is going to come down and prevent this from happening and put people away for a long, long time.”

2026 Contract With Our Readers

  ,

Bondi: Don Lemon arrested in ‘coordinated attack’ on Minnesota church added by on
View all posts by Editor Two →