{"id":467800,"date":"2026-02-14T07:23:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-14T07:23:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/467800\/"},"modified":"2026-02-14T07:23:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T07:23:11","slug":"journalist-don-lemon-pleads-not-guilty-in-minnesota-ice-protest-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/467800\/","title":{"rendered":"Journalist Don Lemon pleads not guilty in Minnesota ICE protest case"},"content":{"rendered":"

MINNEAPOLIS \u2014 Former CNN anchor Don Lemon pleaded not guilty on Friday in a criminal case stemming from his coverage of a \u200bprotest at a Minnesota church<\/a> against President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.<\/p>\n

Lemon entered the courthouse in St. Paul on Friday afternoon wearing a suit and jacket. On his way in, he clapped his hands and waved to \u200csupporters, but did not respond to questions from reporters.<\/p>\n

Standing at a podium and flanked by his attorneys, Lemon answered “not guilty” when asked for his plea.<\/p>\n

Lemon, now an \u2060independent journalist, livestreamed a protest against Trump’s deployment of thousands \u200bof armed immigration agents into Democratic-governed Minnesota’s biggest cities. \u2060The protest disrupted a Jan. 18 service at Cities Church in St. Paul.<\/p>\n

He was charged with conspiring to deprive others of \u200ctheir civil rights and violating \u200ca law that has been used to crack down on demonstrations at abortion clinics but also forbids \u2060obstructing access to houses of worship.<\/p>\n

The courtroom on Friday was packed with people \u2060supporting Lemon and the church protesters, who were also there to be arraigned.<\/p>\n

Dozens of Lemon supporters gathered in front of the courthouse for a protest, chanting “drop the charges” and “protect free speech.” They held signs with slogans including “Lemon was just doing his job” and “ICE out.”<\/p>\n

Lemon’s lawyer has called the case an attack on First Amendment free speech rights.<\/p>\n

Trump has frequently lashed out at the media, stripping journalists of access-granting credentials and suing some news outlets over their \u200ccoverage of him. The president praised the Justice Department for bringing the charges against \u200bLemon, calling the disruption of the church service a “horrible thing.”<\/p>\n

Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a Jan. 30 social media video that prosecutors will come after anyone who threatens the “sacred right” to worship freely and safely.<\/p>\n

Protests against immigration crackdown<\/p>\n

Thousands of protesters took to the streets of Minneapolis and other U.S. cities in January to denounce an immigration crackdown in which federal agents fatally shot two U.S. citizens.<\/p>\n

Trump has since agreed to end his deportation surge<\/a> in Minnesota, with many agents set to return to their home states over the next week.<\/p>\n

Organizers of the Cities Church protest told Lemon \u200bthey chose the church because they believed a senior pastor there was working with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.<\/p>\n

In a livestream archived on his \u200cYouTube channel, Lemon \u200ccan be seen meeting \u2060with and interviewing the activists before they go to the church. He then records the disruption inside and interviews congregants, protesters and a pastor, who asks Lemon and the protesters to leave.<\/p>\n

Independent local journalist Georgia Fort was also arrested and charged with the same crimes. Fort has denied wrongdoing and said she was reporting on the protest, not participating. She is scheduled to enter a \u200cplea on Feb. 17.<\/p>\n

Lemon spent 17 \u200byears at CNN, becoming one of its most recognizable personalities, and frequently \u200ccriticizes Trump in his YouTube broadcasts. \u2060Lemon was fired by \u200bCNN in 2023 after making sexist on-air comments for which he later apologized.<\/p>\n

\n The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MINNEAPOLIS \u2014 Former CNN anchor Don Lemon pleaded not guilty on Friday in a criminal case stemming from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":467801,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,1302,3811,3071,3812,134,9746,3729,3,111,3813,3814,99,1505,2987,21,19,22,20,25,24,3324,2986],"class_list":{"0":"post-467800","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-cars","10":"tag-classifieds","11":"tag-crime","12":"tag-homes","13":"tag-jobs","14":"tag-law","15":"tag-local","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-politics","18":"tag-radio","19":"tag-salt-lake","20":"tag-sports","21":"tag-television","22":"tag-traffic","23":"tag-united-states","24":"tag-united-states-of-america","25":"tag-unitedstates","26":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","27":"tag-us","28":"tag-usa","29":"tag-utah","30":"tag-weather"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=467800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/467801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}