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.

Bondi said Fort, former CNN anchor Don Lemon, Trahern Jeen Crews and Jamael Lyndell Lundy, the latter of whom is presently running for the state's 65th senate district, were taken into custody on Friday morning. According to a federal indictment filed with the U.S. District Court in the District of Minnesota, a grand jury charged each person with conspiracy against the right of religious freedom at a place of worship and injuring, intimidating and interfering with the exercise of the right of religious freedom at a place of worship.

Activist Nekima Levy Armstrong, St. Paul School Boardmember Chauntyll Louisa Allen and three others were named as defendants in the indictment.

Crews and Lundy were released from custody on Friday afternoon.

U.S. Assistant Attorney Robert Keenan sought detention because, he said, Fort, Crews and Lundy committed a crime of violence. Keenan, a prosecutor appointed by President Trump, typically operates in California.

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.

"To all the media that made a statement on behalf of me, thank you so much," Fort said shortly after she was released.

She later added, "Documenting what is happening in our community is not a crime."

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.

According to the indictment, the nine people charged conspired to "injure, oppress, threaten, and intimidate multiple persons, including the clergy, staff, and congregants" of the church.

Court documents said the group met at a shopping center for a "pre-op briefing" and, on the day of the protest, entered the Church to "conduct a takeover-style attack and engaged in various acts in furtherance of the conspiracy."

The indictment said protesters at the church joined together in various chants, including "ICE Out" and "stand up, fight back" while "gesturing in an aggressive and hostile manner, which congregants and the pastor perceived as threats of violence and a potential prelude to a mass shooting."

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."

The Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists strongly condemned Friday's arrests, saying, in part, "Journalists have not only the right, but the responsibility to observe and report events in the public interest. It is not illegal to document a protest against the federal government. The fact that the protest took place in a church does not negate journalists' First Amendment rights to report."

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."