Don Lemon Brushes Off Justice Department Threat Over Minnesota Church Protest Coverage: ‘It’s Called Journalism’

Don Lemon pushed back against criticism from the Department of Justice of his coverage of the protest that interrupted a church service in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Sunday, telling both viewers and his critics that he and his team were performing an “act of journalism.”

Lemon and his film crew followed a protest group Sunday as its members walked into a church and interrupted its congregation’s service that day with a passionate protest. Lemon commentated on the demonstration as it happened in real-time but pointedly did not participate. Instead, he interviewed both those protesting and those whose church visit was interrupted by the demonstration.

“We were there chronicling protests,” Lemon said in an Instagram video posted Monday. “Once the protest started in the church, we did an act of journalism, which was report on it and talk to the people who were involved, which included the pastor, members of the church and members of the organization. That’s it. It’s called journalism. First Amendment. All that stuff.”

“Why don’t you talk to the actual person who is in charge of the organization and whose idea it was to have the protest at the church before you start blaming me for stuff for which you have no idea about?” Lemon added. “Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

The protesters occupied the church out of the belief that one of the figures associated with it was a worker for ICE. During the protest, Lemon told his viewers, “We’re not part of the activists. But we’re here, just reporting on them.”

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who serves as the head of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, has, however, taken public issue with Lemon’s coverage of the protest. Dhillon responded Sunday on X to a tweet with quotes from Lemon defending his coverage as protected by the Constitution.

“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,” Dhillon tweeted. “You are on notice!”

“I had no affiliation to that organization. I didn’t even know they were going to this church until we followed them there,” Lemon said in his video response on Instagram Monday, while accusing Dhillon and other “fake news MAGAS” of “losing their mind over something that’s not even true.”

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“Don Lemon has made numerous admissions online as to his participation here and his intention and his knowledge of what was going to happen inside that sacred place,” Dhillon said during a Monday interview with right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson. “He went into the facility and then he began ‘committing journalism.’ as if that’s sort of a shield from being an embedded part of a criminal conspiracy. It isn’t.”

“We’re getting our ducks in a row,” Dhillon continued. “We’re putting the facts together, and this is a very serious matter. Come next Sunday, nobody should think in the United States that they’re going to be able to get away with this.”

The DOJ is purportedly investigating the protest as a potential violation of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which prohibits “intentionally injuring, intimidating, or interfering with, or attempting to injure, intimidate, or interfere, 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.”

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