Don Lemon reports outside City Hall in New York on June 26, 2025. Lev Radin/ZUMA

Don Lemon, the prominent journalist and former CNN anchor, was arrested by federal agents Thursday in Los Angeles on charges that he violated a law while reporting on a protest at a church in St. Paul, Minnesota, earlier this month. 

The saga represents a startling, if not new, turn in the Trump administration’s attacks on reporters and protesters.

President Donald Trump’s administration, via Attorney General Pam Bondi, arrested Lemon along with three others—Georgia Fort, an independent journalist who filmed last night as agents came to her home, along with Trahern Jeen Crews and Jamael Lydell Lundy, both activists—who were at the church during the demonstration against federal immigration agents’ violent campaign in the Twin Cities. On January 18, protestors entered Cities Church in St. Paul, where a pastor was identified as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official. 

Abbe Lowell, a lawyer for Lemon, said that the reporter had been picked up while covering the Grammy awards. “Don has been a journalist for 30 years, and his constitutionally protected work in Minneapolis was no different than what he has........

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