Frequently fired independent news commentator Don Lemon has been warned by the Justice Department over allegations he joined a mob of anti-ICE protesters who stormed a Sunday church service in St. Paul.
“A house of worship is not a public forum for your protest! It is a space protected from exactly such acts by federal criminal and civil laws! Nor does the First Amendment protect your pseudo journalism of disrupting a prayer service,” Harmeet Dhillon, the Justice Department’s assistant attorney general for civil rights, chided Lemon on X.
“You are on notice!” she wrote, noting in a follow-up post that the FBI has been “activated” and accusing the protesters of “desecrating a house of worship and interfering with Christian worshippers.”
Don Lemon was in Minneapolis during the anti-ICE protests. Don Lemon / YouTubeLemon, who has been documenting the increasingly violent protests following the shooting of Renee Good, entered the church with the agitators as the protest broke out and began filming the uproar.
He dismissed calls for him to be prosecuted for joining in with the group and defended his actions as protected under the First Amendment.
“The MAGA administration and the fake news MAGAs are losing their mind over something that’s not even true,” Lemon said, claiming he had “no affiliations” with the organization, defending his actions as “an act of journalism.”
Several dozen agitators burst into Cities Church on Sunday morning and began chanting “ICE out,” reportedly under the impression that the house of worship’s pastor, David Easterwood, is a member of the federal immigration enforcement agency — a notion that Lemon perpetuated in a post on left-wing echo chamber social network Bluesky.
Don Lemon went to a Minneapolis church as protesters accused its pastor of having ties to ICE. Don Lemon / YouTubeThere is indeed a man named David Easterwood serving as acting ICE director of the St. Paul field office, but The Post could not independently confirm whether he was the same person who heads up Cities Church.
Lemon interviewed the church’s lead pastor, Jonathan Parnell, on camera, who called the protest “shameful.”
Protesters at the Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, on Sunday, Jan. 18, 2026. Don Lemon / YouTubeLemon fired back, “Listen, there’s a Constitution and a First Amendment to freedom of speech and freedom to assemble and protest,” he said.
The former longtime CNN anchor dispensed with his ardent defense of free speech in a 2024 interview with Elon Musk, however, in which he pressured him to delete several “hateful” memes on X — which the world’s richest man declined to do on the grounds they weren’t illegal.
