Don Lemon
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Don Lemon went to Minnesota to cover anti-ICE protests. Now he's got the Justice Department breathing down his neck.

The former CNN anchor livestreamed a group of demonstrators as they barged into a Sunday service at Cities Church in St Paul on 18 January. Within hours, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon had put him 'on notice' and announced a federal investigation, according to NBC News.

'A house of worship is not a public forum for your protest!' Dhillon wrote on X. 'It is a space protected from exactly such acts by federal criminal and civil laws! You are on notice!'

The DOJ's Civil Rights Division is looking at potential violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act - a 1994 law that also bars interference with religious worship. Penalties include hefty fines and prison time.

Federal Prosecutors Head To Minneapolis

Dhillon went on conservative host Benny Johnson's show and didn't hold back. Two federal prosecutors from her office were already on their way to Minneapolis, she said. She called what happened at the church a 'heinous act' getting the 'highest level of attention' from the Justice Department.

She raised the possibility of felony charges under the Ku Klux Klan Act, a Reconstruction-era law designed to protect civil rights.

'Journalism is not a badge or a shield,' Dhillon told Johnson, waving off Lemon's defence that he was just doing his job.

'Come next Sunday, nobody should think in the United States that they're going to be able to get away with this,' she warned. '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.'

Lemon Fires Back

The 59-year-old broadcaster isn't backing down. He told NBC News it was 'notable' that he'd been made the face of a protest he was only reporting on - and he wasn't even the only journalist there.

'That framing is telling,' Lemon wrote. 'What's even more telling is the barrage of violent threats, along with homophobic and racist slurs, directed at me online by MAGA supporters.'

In an Instagram video, he said he had no idea the protesters were heading to that church until he followed them there. 'Once the protest started in the church, we did an act of journalism,' he said. 'First Amendment, all that stuff.'

The Pastor Who Runs ICE Operations

Why that church? Protesters say David Easterwood, listed as a pastor on the Cities Church website, moonlights as acting director of the ICE field office in St Paul. He stood next to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem at a press conference in Minneapolis last October and is a defendant in an ACLU lawsuit over ICE tactics, ABC News reported.

Easterwood wasn't there on Sunday. Lead pastor Jonathan Parnell was, though, and he confronted Lemon on camera. 'Shameful,' he called the disruption.

St Paul police got calls about 30 to 40 protesters around 10.40 a.m. By the time they arrived, the group had already left and was walking down the alley.

Attorney General Pam Bondi posted on X that she'd spoken to the pastor. 'Attacks against law enforcement and the intimidation of Christians are being met with the full force of federal law,' she wrote.

The Killing That Sparked It All

Minneapolis has been on edge since 7 January, when ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Nicole Good. She was 37, a mother of three. Video shows her turning her car away from federal agents when Ross fired.

Federal officials say Good tried to run over agents. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey watched the footage and called that claim 'bullshit.'

Trump has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act. The Pentagon has about 1,500 troops on standby.

Nekima Levy Armstrong, the attorney who pulled together Sunday's protest, wasn't impressed by the DOJ investigation. 'When you think about the federal government unleashing barbaric ICE agents upon our community, to have someone serving as a pastor who oversees these ICE agents is almost unfathomable to me,' she told PBS NewsHour.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison saw things differently. He thanked Lemon for 'being on the ground in Minnesota to help lift up this fight for truth and fairness.'

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