Independent Minnesota journalist Georgia Fort, others released after arrests over church protest

Independent Minnesota journalist Georgia Fort and two others were released from law enforcement custody Friday afternoon after being arrested over what Attorney General Pam Bondi says was a “coordinated attack” involving anti-ICE protests at Cities Church in St. Paul earlier this month.

WCCO has learned Fort is federally accused of conspiracy against rights and freedom of access to clinic entrances. 

Prosecutors in court sought detention because, they say, Fort committed a crime of violence. Fort’s attorney, Kevin Rich, pushed back strongly, citing other recent arguments in the church protest that denied that detention. A judge agreed with Rich and denied a request from prosecutors that she stay away from the church.

Bondi also announced that former CNN anchor Don Lemon had also been arrested, alongside Trahern Jeen Crews and Jamael Lyndell Lundy, the latter of whom is presently running for the state’s 65th senate district. 

Crews and Lundy were released from custody on Friday afternoon.

Prosecutors say they were involved in a protest that arose upon the discovery that a local official with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement also serves as a pastor at the church.

Fort went live on Facebook for two minutes Friday morning, telling viewers that federal agents were at her door to arrest her, and she was going to go with them to the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in south Minneapolis, which has served as the processing and detention center for those taken into custody during Operation Metro Surge.

“Agents are at my door right now. They’re saying that they were able to go before a grand jury sometime, I guess, in the last 24 hours, and that they have a warrant for my arrest,” Fort said in her livestream. “I’m gonna have to hop here and surrender to agents as a member of the press.”

In Fort’s video, children can be heard crying in the background.

“This is all stemming from the fact that I filmed a protest as a member of the media,” Fort said. “It’s hard to understand how we have a Constitution, constitutional rights, when you can just be arrested for being a member of the press.”

Fort said she was aware that she was on a list of defendants, but did not publish it because it was sealed.

“It is an outrage that a vetted and credentialed member of the media would be in any way prosecuted for doing her appointed duty in covering news. If the federal government can come for Georgia no member of the supposed ‘free’ press is safe,” a representative for the Center for Broadcast Journalism said Friday morning. “Fort, who has been a frontline journalist in multiple media markets, is one of the more valued members of our Twin Cities media landscape. A three-time Emmy winner, Fort was one of the only reporters allowed inside the courtroom during the landmark trial of Derek Chauvin.”

Friday’s arrests aren’t the first connected with the protest at the church. Last week, former Twin Cities NAACP president Nekima Levy Armstrong, St. Paul School Board member Chauntyll Louisa Allen and William Kelly were also arrested and later released. The White House tipped further furor when it posted an altered photo of Levy Armstrong’s arrest to make it appear as though she was crying while in handcuffs.

Federal prosecutors in the Minneapolis-based U.S. Attorney’s office had significant concerns with the strength of the evidence in the church protests, a source familiar with the matter told CBS.

When the first defendants were initially charged, no career officials from that office appeared in court, and the Justice Department sent two lawyers from the Civil Rights Division in Washington to handle the proceedings.

The magistrate judge in the case only approved one civil rights charge in those original cases against Armstrong and Allen, but nixed a FACE Act charge against each person on the grounds that there was no probable cause. A third defendant was later charged in connection with the protest as well.

The magistrate judge, Doug Micko, also outright rejected five arrest warrants in the case for lacking probable cause, including Lemon’s, CBS previously reported.

Bondi also announced this week the arrests of 16 others for alleged assaults on immigration enforcement officers during Operation Metro Surge.

On Friday, faith and community leaders and other volunteers are set to demonstrate at the Whipple building over the Trump administration’s “moves to escalate its attacks on Minnesotans’ freedoms.”