By STEVE KARNOWSKI
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Former CNN host turned independent journalist Don Lemon pleaded not guilty to federal civil rights charges Friday, following a protest at a Minnesota church where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official is a pastor. Four others also pleaded not guilty in the case.
Lemon insists he was at the Cities Church in St. Paul to chronicle the Jan. 18 protest but was not a participant. The veteran journalist vowed to fight what he called “baseless charges” and protect his free speech rights.
“For more than 30 years, I’ve been a journalist, and the power and protection of the First Amendment has been the underpinning of my work. The First Amendment, the freedom of the press, are the bedrock of our democracy,” Lemon said outside the courthouse after his arraignment. “And like all of you here in Minnesota, the great people of Minnesota, I will not be intimidated, I will not back down.”
Dozens of supporters gathered outside the courthouse, chanting “Pam Bondi has got to go” and “Protect the press.”
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Journalist Don Lemon, right, speaks to the media outside the U.S. District Courthouse in St. Paul, Minn., Friday, Feb. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Tom Baker)
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Journalist Don Lemon, right, speaks to the media outside the U.S. District Courthouse in St. Paul, Minn., Friday, Feb. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Tom Baker)
‘We the people have to stand for our rights’
Civil rights attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong was among the other defendants who pleaded not guilty Friday. The prominent local activist was the subject of a doctored photo posted on official White House social media that falsely showed her crying during her arrest. The picture is part of a deluge of AI-altered imagery that has circulated since the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal officers in Minneapolis amid President Donald Trump’s administration’s immigration crackdown.
Levy Armstrong echoed Lemon’s defiant words after the hearing.
“We the people have to stand for our rights. We have to stand for the Constitution. We have to stand for our First Amendment rights to freedom of the speech, some freedom of assembly, and freedom of the press,” she said.
“Today we have the federal government trying to weaponize the Department of Justice in order to silence us, in order to prevent us from speaking the truth,” Levy Armstrong said. “They are trying to prevent us from calling out a manifest injustice.”
All of the defendants have been charged under the FACE Act
Protesters interrupted a service at the Southern Baptist church last month, chanting “ICE out” and “Justice for Renee Good,” referring to the 37-year-old mother of three who was fatally shot by an ICE officer in Minneapolis.
In total, nine people have been charged under the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act in relation to the church protest. The FACE Act prohibits interference or intimidation of “any person by force, threat of force, or physical obstruction exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship.”
Two more defendants accused in the protest are scheduled for arraignment next week, including another independent journalist, Georgia Fort.
Penalties can range up to a year in prison and up to a $10,000 fine.
Attorneys for journalists seek to pierce veil of grand jury secrecy
Lawyers for Lemon and Fort filed a joint motion with the court Friday seeking transcripts of the normally secret grand jury proceedings that resulted in the indictments against the nine defendants. They maintained that Lemon and Fort were at the church protest in their capacity as journalists covering the story.
The defense attorneys noted that several judges — including the chief federal judge for Minnesota — found no probable cause to support the complaints that prosecutors first tried to file against the two journalists, so they refused to sign arrest warrants for Lemon or Fort before the government turned to the grand jury.
They said those refusals raise serious concerns about whether the government made misleading or inaccurate statements of law and/or facts to the grand jury. And they expressed concern that President Donald Trump, Attorney General Pam Bondi and other Justice Department officials put undue pressure on prosecutors to charge them.
“In the United States of America, we do not prosecute journalists for doing their job. That happens in Russia, China, Iran and other authoritarian regimes. And yet the government sold this unconstitutional mess to the grand jury,” they wrote. “Disclosure of the grand jury proceedings is necessary to ensure the government did not mislead or mis-instruct it.”
The attorneys also said prosecutors told them they will oppose the motion.
Protest provoked conservative religious backlash
Renee Carlson, an attorney with True North Legal, which is representing Cities Church, said in a statement that by pleading not guilty Lemon and others are “doubling down on their claim that the press can do whatever they want under the auspices of journalism.”
“The First Amendment does not protect premeditated schemes to violate the sanctity of a sanctuary, disrupt worship services, or intimidate children,” Carlson said. “There is no ‘press pass’ to trespass on church property or conspire to invade religious worship.”
The church protest drew sharp complaints from conservative religious and political leaders. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt warned in a social media post at the time: “President Trump will not tolerate the intimidation and harassment of Christians in their sacred places of worship.” Even clergy who oppose the administration’s immigration enforcement tactics expressed discomfort.
Former federal prosecutor is part of Lemon’s legal team
One of Lemon’s attorneys who was in court Friday is Joe Thompson, one of several former prosecutors who have left the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office in recent weeks citing frustration with the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement crackdown in the state and the Justice Department’s response to the killing of Good and Pretti.
Thompson had led the sprawling investigation of major public program fraud cases for the prosecutors office until he resigned last month. The Trump administration has cited the fraud cases, in which most defendants have come from the state’s large Somali community, as justification for its immigration crackdown.
Associated Press journalists Mark Vancleave in St. Paul and Rebecca Boone in Boise, Idaho, contributed.
